legal, but upon arbitrary, that is, upon discretionary grounds, and
the incapacity is ex vi termini and inclusively comprehended in the
expulsion, is not the incapacity voted in the expulsion? Are they
not convertible terms? and, if incapacity is voted to be inherent in
expulsion, if expulsion be arbitrary, incapacity is arbitrary also.
I have, therefore, shown that the power of incapacitation is a
legislative power; I have shown that legislative power does not
belong to the House of Commons; and, therefore, it follows that the
House of Commons has not a power of incapacitation.

I know not the origin of the House of Commons, but am very sure that
it did not create itself; the electors wore prior to the elected;
whose rights originated either from the people at large, or from
some other form of legislature, which never could intend for the
chosen a power of superseding the choosers.

If you have not a power of declaring an incapacity simply by the
mere act of declaring it, it is evident to the most ordinary reason
you cannot have a right of expulsion, inferring, or rather,
including, an incapacity, For as the law, when it gives any direct
right, gives also as necessary incidents all the means of acquiring
the possession of that right, so where it does not give a right
directly, it refuses all the means by which such a right may by any
mediums be exercised, or in effect be indirectly acquired. Else it
is very obvious that the intention of the law in refusing that right
might be entirely frustrated, and the whole power of the legislature
baffled. If there be no certain invariable rule of eligibility, it
were better to get simplicity, if certainty is not to be had; and to
resolve all the franchises of the subject into this one short
proposition--the will and pleasure of the House of Commons.