of having no appeal from their jurisdiction is made to imply that
they have no rule in the exercise of it: the judgment does not
derive its validity from its conformity to the law; but
preposterously the law is made to attend on the judgment; and the
rule of the judgment is no other than the OCCASIONAL WILL OF THE
HOUSE. An arbitrary discretion leads, legality follows; which is
just the very nature and description of a legislative act.

This claim in their hands was no barren theory. It was pursued into
its utmost consequences; and a dangerous principle has begot a
correspondent practice. A systematic spirit has been shown upon
both sides. The electors of Middlesex chose a person whom the House
of Commons had voted incapable; and the House of Commons has taken
in a member whom the electors of Middlesex had not chosen. By a
construction on that legislative power which had been assumed, they
declared that the true legal sense of the country was contained in
the minority, on that occasion; and might, on a resistance to a vote
of incapacity, be contained in any minority.

When any construction of law goes against the spirit of the
privilege it was meant to support, it is a vicious construction. It
is material to us to be represented really and bona fide, and not in
forms, in types, and shadows, and fictions of law. The right of
election was not established merely as a MATTER OF FORM, to satisfy
some method and rule of technical reasoning; it was not a principle
which might substitute a Titius or a Maevius, a John Doe or Richard
Roe, in the place of a man specially chosen; not a principle which
was just as well satisfied with one man as with another. It is a
right, the effect of which is to give to the people that man, and
that man only, whom by their voices, actually, not constructively