wnjust, or corrupt, then is he to the life of the law a deadly murderer; to the foul of the King's juftice, a betraying traitor; to the virtue of the fenate's advice, a deceiving evil, and to the body of the common-wealth, a devouring wolf,

If a people governed by the direction of wholefome laws, by the wisdom and juftice of a good King, by the advice of an uncorrupted fenate, and by the difcipline of an impartial magiftrate, were not loyal and obedient, they would be rather the whelps of beafts than the fons of men, rather monsters of nature than creatures of reafon. Indeed fuch a fituation never yet prefented itself. An honeft, undefigning King, with murmuring fubjects, is a phenomenon, in politics never yet obferved. Full well do the people know, for it is engraven on their hearts, that the glory of a GOOD King is, and must be in their honour, his greatness their protection, his abundance their riches, his fafety their fecurity, his content their joy. A King muft much mif. rule before his people begin to complain; he may long continue to do fo before they are driven to extremities: but let him beware betimes who is engaged in fuch a course; let him not defpife the people's voice; for the Royal flag is not fafe when he hears the hunters cries. The branching antlers of the one, and rhe shining diadem of the other, may for a while keep the ftaunch hounds at bay. To his fwiftnefs this may truft for fecurity, and that to his military; but they will both equally fail them in the end; they will fall unpitied victims to ill-judging pride and mifplaced confidence.

AN OLD TEMPLAR.

AN IMPARTIAL REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS. A fair Trial of the Important Question, or the Rights of Election af ferted, against the doctrine of INCAPACITY by EXPULSION, or by RESOLUTION, &c. &c. 8vo. 3s. Almon.

SUBJECT which has divided the whole nation, and given birth to a step on the part of the people, which is but feldom taken, and then only on emergent cafes, I mean petitioning the throne for the diffolution of parliament, requires the most candid, as well as the most ample difcuffion from the press, and accordingly we find it has employed the pens of men of genius, and of men acquainted with, and well verfed in the laws and customs of the land, and the law of Parliament; during the fummer recefs. Our readers, therefore, muft not be furprized at our continuing a copious review of pamphlets on this contested point: the inducements to the farther purfuit of the subject are many, but we fhall only inftance two. We have pro

feffed

feffed to keep the POLITICAL REGISTER clear of all, but Political fubjects, fo that it may fairly challenge a diftinction from all monthly publications whatever. With this view, we have droped all animadverfions and criticisms upon books and pamphlets written on mifcellaneous fubjects; and obferving that from the multiplicity of publications which other reviewers are obliged to attend to, thofe on political fubjects, have often been paffed over in filence, or but flightly noticed in the magazines and reviews, we have determined to lay before our readers, copious extracts and difinterested remarks on all political publications, in which we fhall endeavour to do justice to the authors, and to furnish the public with a clear and early state of public affairs. The fecond motive, which particularly refpects the late decifion of the Middlesex election, is, that we are defirous to collect to one point of view all that has been written on it worthy of notice, against the opening of the next feffion of parliament, when it is poffible that the additional information thrown out from the prefs, fince the laft feffion, joined to the opinions of fome great lawyers, and the petitions to the throne from feveral counties, may produce a re-confideration of that matter, and make it once more a fubject of general converfation.

THE work before us is a complete volume, confifting of 248 pages in octavo, written with great labour and attention to the fubject, by fome very able hand; and there is no doubt to be made that the author if not a profeffor, is a clofe ftudier of the law, to this qualification for difcuffing the point in difpute, is added a thorough knowledge of the proceedings in parliament, and likewife, which is rarely to be met with, a talent for conducting a difficult controverfy on a delicate argument without warmth or refentment, free from abufe or indecent reflections on his opponents. He fupports the rights of election against the late decifion; and controverts the arguments advanced in favour of that extraordinary meafure, which arguments collected from all the writers on that fide of that question may be reduced to two heads.

I. That incapacity to be re-elected is the implied confequence of expulfion.

II. That the fame incapacity may be created by a refolution of the house of commons.

Both these propofitions are invalidated by our learned author; and he grounds his confutation of them, on the law of the land, and the law and ufage of parliament. To follow him through all the intricate mazes of controverfy, we should be under a neceffity of quoting fo largely from the writers he oppofes, that it would require more room than we can poffibly

fpare

fpare from other fubjects in this or any future regifter, we fhall therefore only select fuch paffages as throw a new light on the queftion, or ferve to corroborate the fentiments of the writers who have efpoufed the caufe fo ably fupported in the prefent treatife.

66

The power of expulfion had been called in queftion by former opponents of the decifion of the Middlesex election; but we are told in this work, that this has nothing to do with the debate, and that the house of commons undoubtedly have exercised that right in all times. It is fo rivetted in practice without controul or contradiction, as to become in my opinion, fairly the law and ufage of parliament. For my own part, I have no objection at all to it, and in explaining the nature and end of expulfion, I may probably justify the expediency and neceffity of the power." He obferves that one of the chief pofitions of his adverfaries is, "That the house of commons has the fole and exclufive power of examining and determining the rights and qualifications of electors and elected, together with the returns of writs for the election of members, and in short, all matters incidental to fuch elections. This propofition, fays he, which takes up above one half of a performance of one of my antagonifts, is alfo admitted, but it is not any part of the question we difpute. Neither is it any part of the debate whether Mr. Wilkes was justly or unjustly, or for what offence he was expelled in the late feffion of parliament. Nor yet, how or in what manner, whether with unanimity or divifion, the vote of the houfe of commons paffed, refolving or adjudging Mr. Wilkes to be incable of ferving in the prefent parliament." After fhewing that these and fome other propofitions of lefs moment thrown out by the advocates for the measure, do not enter into the merits of the cafe our author proceeds to fhew his opinion of the Queftion. The fhort and comprehenfive ftate of the queftion feems to be no other than this- Was or was not Mr. Wilkes,

:

he having been in that feffion of parliament expelled the house, incapable of being elected a member to ferve in the prefent parliament? The words of the refolution are, that Mr. Wilkes was and is incapable. And the refolution is, by the order following hard at its heels for a new writ, thus paraphrafed: That Mr. Wilkes was adjudged incapable of being elected a member to fer-ve in this parliament.

For the trial of this question thus accurately stated, he takes the following method, to enquire in the firft place

-If ex

pulfion, ipfo jure, creates an incapacity of being re-elected in the fame parliament? It had been urged on the other fide, that if any man of plain fenfe, or even a school boy was to be asked what was meant by expelling a man from any fociety, they would certainly anfwer that he fhall never be a member of that

club, or college, or school again.

This

This, fays our author, is literally a childish argument. Is any fchool boy fo ignorant as not to know, that though a fcholar expelled cannot belong to the school till he is again admitted, yet he may be reftored? But the cafe itself is different. A member of parliament expelled is cut off and fevered from the parliament. His relation to it is diffolved. But why may it not revive in the fame way it was created at firft? The mafter of a school, governors of a college, or a club, have the power of admiffion, and thereby of conftitating the relation of the members. The houfe of commons have not the power of creating a member. That, the electors only have, and by their election the relation is created at first or revived after it has ceafed or been diffolved. I admit that expulfion diffolves the relation as much as if it never exiftedbut it may be restored in the regular way of conftituting it, whatever that is." "The next enquiry therefore is-If there be any acquired or adopted fignification of the term expulfion, fixed by a conftant practical ufe of the word in the house of commons, or any exprefs precedents by judgment of the house, of fufficient authority to afcertain that in the fenfe and ufage of parliament, expulfion neceffarily includes and infers incapacity. Here our author remarks, in objection to the precedents that have been produced to fhew that perfons expelled never were re-elected, except the fingle inftance of Robert Walpole Efq;that one fingle inftance of a re-election after expulfion, is better proof that it has not been the general fenfe of mankind, that incapacity is the neceffary effect of expulfion, than an hundred inftances of perfons expelled and not re-elected are, that it is. For fuch a fingle inftance brings the queftion into judgment, being an exprefs declaration of the fenfe of the electors, and their appeal to the house itself for a decifion. If therefore it can be Thewn that a perfon re-elected after expulfion did fit, it is inconteftible evidence, and of decifive authority, that it was not the fenfe of parliament, that expulfion created an incapacity. It is a pofitive proof of the negative, and the only one the nature of the thing admits of."On the fubject of expulfion-incapacity, we have the following ftriking reflections.

The people hold the right of election abfolutely independent of the houfe of commons, and the reprefentatives themfelves hold their reprefentative-right alfo independent of the house, with this fingle limitation of being liable to expulfion with its juft and conftitutional effects. Do the gentlemen then recollect what incapacity is? That it is laid not upon the perfon expelled only, nor upon his own conftituents only; but upon all the electors of England. And fhall the house of commons, in the perfon of one man, disfranchife all the people of England? The house of commons bound to maintain and defend all the privileges of the peopleThe houfe of commons which cannot make a law to deprive the meaneft fubject of the lowest right- Yet disfranchifing them it is; for the unlimited freedom of election controuled by nothing but the law of the

land,

land, is of the effence of the franchife; and if reftrained but as to one fubject who is legally capable, and whom the law has not incapacitated; (and it must be to as many as the house in their wisdom and difcretion thinks fit to expel) the franchife fo far diminished, it is fo far cut off. But with what part of the conftitution or power of the houfe does this quadrate? It is totally difcordant with the origin, the nature and end of the inftitution-with the conftitution of parliament, which is emphatically the law of parliament.

As to the ufes of expulfion we are informed by this judicious writer that they are -to punish the member as an example for preferving order and preventing offencesto preferve the purity of the houfe, and to fecure to the conftituents a proper reprefentation. The laft and greatest of these ends, he declares is fecured by expulfion without incapacity, becaufe it gives the conftituents a new choice.And with refpect to the re-election of the expelled member nothing can be more fenfible than the following reflections."If the caufe of the expulfion does not convince electors that the perfon expelled is unfit to reprefent them, it is no great fign in favour of the expulfion: and I think it is by much the better opinion, that the judgment of the conftituents ought to prevail over that of the houfe fuppofing them both to be equally liable to err. Let me add this confideration morepower of expulfion is neceffary to fecure to the conflituents and to the kingdom a proper reprefentation; fo the free right of election may, in its turn, be useful to protect a fit reprefentation against the groundlefs fury, or political frenzy of a perverted majority of a houfe of commons, which has had its days of havock before now, to contraft with any period of the people's folly."

That if the

Having fhewn that incapacity cannot be implied in, or be the neceffary effect of expulfion, and this fo clearly from the principles of the conflitution, from the law of the land, from the law and ufage of parliament, and from the standard of common reafon, that his antagonists are abfolutely nonfuited. He obferves that the difcuffion of this branch of the contest unavoidably anticipates in fome meafure, the fecond branch, namely, the authority and effect of a refolution of the house of commons declaring an incapacity or ineligibility.

It had been advanced on the other fide that admitting incapacity not to be the neceffary confequence of expulfion, or that expulfion does not of itfelf create incapacity, the house have a right to declare who are, and are not eligible. And alfo that the houfe have a right of declaring by their own refolution fingly, what the law is, as to eligibility or difqualification. Thefe arguments are overthrown by obferving, that the house act in the capacity of a court of judicature in the examination and determination of an election or return, or of any of the matters incidental thereto. If therefore the houfe VOL. VI.

G

of