" It is not a, fixed law,
because you profess you vary it according to the occasion, exercise
it according to your discretion; no man can call for it as a right.
It is argued that the incapacity is not originally voted, but a
consequence of a power of expulsion: but if you expel, not upon
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.
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