violated, or their proceedings arraigned, they were compe tent to the vindication of their own honor. For the other libels he has been already expelled. Shall the houfe punish twice for the fame offence? In order to fatisfy the vengeance of the court, shall we act in direct oppofition, not to the forms only, but to the very effence of the conftitution? Shall we blend the executive and judicial powers with the legislative, and take upon ourselves the odium of trying and punishing in a fummary manner an offence cognizable by the laws in the ordinary courts of judicature? Will not this pretended zeal for the honor of religion, and the fupport of good order and government, be clearly difcerned to originate in a flavish complaifance to the mandates of the court? Diffimulation is a falfe garb, which fools put on, and think they wear the robe of wifdom. In the profecution of this defign, if the houfe fhould condefcend to become the paffive inftruments of minifterial oppreffion, nothing can enfue but humiliation, contempt, and difgrace."

It is notwithstanding fingular, that the apparently obvious and probable confequence of this expulfion does not seem to have occurred either to the minifters of the crown, or to the members in oppofition. But whatever might have been previously expected, the fact is, that, a new writ being iffu ed, Mr. Wilkes was a fecond time returned with the greateft unanimity. The house now began to perceive the dilemma in which it had with fuch palpable indifcretion involved itself. By proceeding in this bufinefs, they must incur the refentment, perhaps the deteftation, of the public; by receding, it were impoffible to escape their contempt. Preferring what appeared to them the leaft of thefe two evils, they refolved," that Mr. Wilkes, having been once expelled, was incapable of fitting in the fame parliament, and that the election was therefore void." The freeholders of Middlesex, equally determined with the houfe of commons, chose him a third time their reprefentative, with the fame unanimity. The election was again declared void by the commons;

and

and in order to terminate a contest in which the house ap peared to fo little advantage, colonel Luttrell, a member of that affembly, had the courage voluntarily to vacate his feat in parliament, with a view to offer himself as a candidate for Middlesex; being previously affured that he should at all events, and whatever might be the difparity of numbers upon the poll, be the fitting member. At the fourth election Mr. Wilkes was again returned by the sheriffs; the votes In his favor being 1243 to 296: but, on a petition from co lonel Luttrell, he was, after a vehement debate continued to a very late hour (March 3, 1769), declared DULY ELECTED!

By this decifion the nation was thrown into a paroxyfm of rage and confternation, which the occafion certainly could not justify, and which only ferved to fhew how a comparatively trivial queftion may be magnified into artificial life portance, by making it the object of political and personal contention. It could not be denied that the house of commons had ever exercised a judicial authority, which could in no other hands be fo properly placed, in determining upon the validity of returns, and the qualifications of their own members. This authority might undoubtedly be abused or indifcreetly exercised, but all power is in its own nature lia ble to abufe; and if so vague an objection be admitted, the powers vefted in all political bodies, however conftituted, must be annihilated, and the bands of civil society are at once diffolved. The power of expulfion for fuch offences as appear to the houfe to render any of its members unworthy of the truft repofed in them, had been exercifed in numerous inftances from time immemorial; and though no cafe precifely fimilar to the prefent in all its circumftances could be adduced; the house of commons now exifting had certainly as valid a right to make a precedent in a new cafe within the limits of their own peculiar jurifdiction as any former houfe of comPhons, or as the courts fitting in Weftminster Hall-And had the expulfion of Mr. Wilkes been itfelf a popular mea

fure,

fure, the fubfequent fteps taken by the houfe would no doubt have been deemed perfectly regular, as analogous to the fpirit of former decifions, conformable to the general powers of adjudication vefted in the house, and neceffarily flowing from the original and established parliamentary right of expulfion.

In the famous cafe of Sir Robert Walpole, expelled the house, A. D. 1711, for "breach of truft and corruption," and re-elected for the borough of Lynn Regis, the house refolved, that he was incapable of fitting in that parliament, though they did not on that occafion venture to declare Mr. Taylor, the candidate next upon the poll, duly elected. But in the cafe of ferjeant Comyns, who, being returned for the borough of Malden in the year 1715, had refused to take the qualification oath, the house more confiftently determined that the votes given to Comyns were loft, and that Mr. Tuffnell, next upon the poll, was duly elected. And in the cafe of Bedford, 1727, the houfe, in conformity to the former decifion, declared Mr. Orlebar duly elected, though inferior by no less than two hundred and twenty-five votes on the face of the poll to Mr. Ongley, who was previously difqualified by holding the office of commiffioner of the cuf toms. From these authorities combined, a complete precedent might therefore be formed; the first affirming that a member once expelled could not fit in the fame parliament; the two latter, that votes given to a disqualified person were abfolutely, and to every elective purpose, null and void. But if no precedents could have been adduced, the reafon of the thing would evidently have dictated to the house fuch a decifion as was effential to the dignity and confiftency of their own jurisdiction, and to the avoidance of an abfurdity so palpable and ridiculous, as would be the doctrine now for the first time promulgated, that parliament had a right to expel in infinitum, and the electors a right to re-elect in infinitum. It must nevertheless be acknowledged, that a difcretionary power of expulfion is liable to be perverted to very bad pur

pofes,

poses; and therefore it was judged proper by an act passed in the course of the enfuing feffion, to specify the offences which fhall in future render incapacitation the neceffary result of expulfion and thus, enftead of encroaching on the rights of the people in matters of election, this obnoxious house of commons did in reality fix legal and definite boundaries to their own power.

To charge therefore, as many scrupled not to do, in confequence of their determined conduct in this ill-fated contest, the minifters of the crown with a premeditated defign to fubvert the conflitution would be very unjust; though it may fairly be confidered as displaying a moft dangerous excess of complaifance to the crown on the part of the commons, precipitately to involve themselves in a quarrel with their constituents, in order to gratify the intemperate refentment of the court against an obfcure and unprotected individual, and as a cogent proof of the alarming influence of the executive power over the legislative body. The worft minifters of the crown during the present reign cannot indeed be reasonably suspected of a design so extravagant as that which hath been fometimes seriously ascribed to them, of raising the prerogative above all control; but it is the characteristic of the prefent reign, that a wife government has been moft unwifely administered-that high and arbitrary principles have been revived and acted upon-that the fpirit of toryifm, i. e. the spirit of pride, of violence, and domination, has, with very short intervals, prevailed; and that the mild, the moderate, the conciliatory maxims of genuine whiggifm have been discountenanced and difcarded*.

VOL. I.

M

The

*November 17, 1768, died at a very advanced age the duke of Newcastle, who for more than fifty years had occupied the greatest offices in the state. The famous quadruple alliance was figned by this nobleman at Whitehall, July 22, 1718. He might, in the last years of his life, with propriety adopt the words of the poet

"I've been fo long remember'd, I'm forgot."

His grace was fucceeded in the chancellorship of the univerfity of Cambridge by the duke of Grafton. In the autumn of this year alfo died the most rev. Dr. Thomas

The house of commons proceeded, after the question of the Middlesex election was thus determined, to the ufual bufinefs of the feffion, and thirty-three thoufand men were voted for the fea and land fervice of the year 1769. The charter of the Eaft-India company was prolonged for the farther term of five years, on conditions fimilar to the last agreement; but the company were now allowed to increase their dividend to twelve and a half per cent. during this term, provided they did not in any one year raise it above one per cent. On the other hand, fhould the dividend be reduced below the present standard of ten per cent. the ftipulated payment of 400,000l per annum to the public should be proportionally diminished; and if the dividend fhould fink to fix per cent. the payment to the public fhould wholly ceafe.

A meffage from the king was on the laft day of February (1769) delivered to the house by the chancellor of the exchequer, acquainting them, that the arrears of the civil lift amounted to the fum of 513,000l. and defiring the affiftance of his faithful commons to discharge this heavy incumbrance. Such was the zeal and loyalty of the house, and fuch their unlimited confidence in his majefty's prudence and economy of expenditure, that on the 2d of March the fum required was granted, without any formality of inveftigation.

On

Thomas Secker, archbishop of Canterbury, which metropolitan fee, after the death of Dr. Herring, had been filled for a very thort interval by Dr. Hutton, on whofe decease in 1758 this high dignity was conferred on Dr. Secker, then bifhop of Oxford; a prelate of a life rigidly virtuous, completely verfed in all branches of ecclefiaftical learning, but of a capacity by no means elevated, and whofe zeal was at leaft as confpicuous as his candor and judgment. His ardent defire to establish epifcopacy in America is well known; and if no fears and jealoufies had been entertained that the new bishops would have been invested with fome fort or degree of temporal jurifdiction, the plan would not have been oppofed by the Americans, who declared, that they objected not to the introduction of bifhops, but they were determined not to admit of LORD BISHOPS. Bishops on the primitive model, unconnected with the ftate, have been fince the revolution introduced into the different provinces, even of New England itself, without exciting the flighteft alarm or apprehenfion. In the character of Secker, though in many refpects excellent, we may look in vain for the benignity, the liberality, the generous and enlarged views of his predeceffor archbishop Herring. Dr. Secker was fucceeded by Dr. Frederic Cornwallis, bishop of Litchfield and Coventry.