not a man in the House, hardly a man in the nation, who may not be
disqualified. That this House should have no power of expulsion is
a hard saying. That this House should have a general discretionary
power of disqualification is a dangerous saying. That the people
should not choose their own representative, is a saying that shakes
the Constitution. That this House should name the representative,
is a saying which, followed by practice, subverts the constitution.
They have the right of electing, you have a right of expelling; they
of choosing, you of judging, and only of judging, of the choice.
What bounds shall be set to the freedom of that choice? Their right
is prior to ours, we all originate there. They are the mortal
enemies of the House of Commons, who would persuade them to think or
to act as if they were a self-originated magistracy, independent of
the people and unconnected with their opinions and feelings. Under
a pretence of exalting the dignity, they undermine the very
foundations of this House. When the question is asked here, what
disturbs the people, whence all this clamour, we apply to the
treasury-bench, and they tell us it is from the efforts of libellers
and the wickedness of the people, a worn-out ministerial pretence.
If abroad the people are deceived by popular, within we are deluded
by ministerial, cant. The question amounts to this, whether you
mean to be a legal tribunal, or an arbitrary and despotic assembly.
I see and I feel the delicacy and difficulty of the ground upon
which we stand in this question. I could wish, indeed, that they
who advised the Crown had not left Parliament in this very
ungraceful distress, in which they can neither retract with dignity
nor persist with justice. Another parliament might have satisfied
the people without lowering themselves. But our situation is not in
our own choice: our conduct in that situation is all that is in our
own option. The substance of the question is, to put bounds to your