AS each history may be considered individually or as it makes a part 124 167 210 243 281 314 343 376 411 446 | 475 | 502 | 525 89 127 168 211 244 282 314 345 378 527 90 128 169 211 244 284 315 346 378 413 447 477 504 527 56 91 130 170 213 247 285 316 348 379 415 453 480 505 528 GREAT BRITAIN. 1770. THE diversity of opinion upon the subject of the Middlesex election, which now engaged and agitated the public mind, was seen in the addresses and petitions presented to the throne. The former treated the re-election of Wilkes as an insult shewn to parliament; represented the seditious and tumultuous disposition of the people to be such as rendered a vigorous exercise of the authority vested in the executive government to be necessary to enforce obedience to it and prevent a subversion of the constitution; and assured his majesty of their hearty concurrence in such measures as might be deemed requisite for that purpose. The latter represented the grievances which had been suffered by the people, particularly the infringement on the rights of electors in the late affair of the Middlesex election, in the most odious light, and prayed redress of them. That from the county of Buckingham, written by Mr. Burke, one of its knights, deserves our notice for the clearness with which it exhibits the merits of the cause, and the decorum with which it is expressed. By the funda"mental principles of the constitution, all the electors of Great Britain "have an undoubted right to elect, by a majority of legal votes, any man ' not 1770 1770 “not rendered incapable by the law of the land. We are thoroughly "sensible that the house of commons may also judicially determine on the "election of members of their own body; but the law of the land cannot "be superseded by any resolution of either house of parliament; no new incapacity can be enacted except by the authority of the legislature. "The claim of either house of parliament to make ordinances which should have the force of laws hath once already proved fatal to the crown and "the constitution, and will, we fear, if the exercise of it be tolerated, prove again destructive of both." 66 66 On the meeting of parliament,† the same subject, the right of the house of commons to incapacitate as well as to expel, was discussed with great vehemence.-Lord Chatham, who had been led into retirement, either by his bodily infirmities, or by his disapprobation of the measures of an administration which he had arranged but could not direct, being restored to health and released from the restraint which the enjoyment of an honourable appointment had laid him under, now appeared at the head of a powerful opposition, formed by a union of his own with the Rockingham and Grenville parties, and spoke in his characteristic strain of fervid eloquence on every question in which the liberty of the subject or the national rights were interested. His first motion was for an amendment to the address on his majesty's speech, importing, "That the peers would take into their most "serious consideration the causes of the discontents which prevailed in so many parts of the king's dominions, and particularly the late proceedings of the house of commons touching the incapacity of John Wilkes, expelled by that house, to be re-elected a member to serve in this present parlia"ment; thereby refusing, by a resolution of one branch of the legislature r only, to the subject his common right, and depriving the electors of Mid"dlesex of their free choice of a representative." In a most forcible and pathetic speech in support of this motion, he cautioned the lords against the danger of departing, in the least point, from the principles of the constitution; "Let us be cautious," said he, "how we invade the liberties of "our fellow-subjects, however mean, however remote; for be assured, my lords, that in whatever part of the empire you suffer slavery to be esta"blished, "blished, whether it be in America, in Ireland, or at home, you will find "it a disease which spreads by contact, and soon reaches from the extremi"ties to the heart. The man who has lost his own freedom becomes from "that moment an instrument in the hands of an ambitious prince to destroy the freedom of others." He then applied his reasonings to the transactions relative to American taxation and the Middlesex election; and 66 entreated the peers, "in 1770 |