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.
The argument, drawn from the courts of law, applying the principles
of law to new cases as they emerge, is altogether frivolous,
inapplicable, and arises from a total ignorance of the bounds
between civil and criminal jurisdiction, and of the separate maxims
that govern these two provinces of law, that are eternally separate.
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