which they cannot be controuled, as even for its abuse they cannot be called to account.

3. A man attainted of felony cannot sit in parliament. The House of Commons must have considered the crimes of Wilkes, as little less heinous than felony. They, justly, therefore, assumed the liberty of treating him as a felon.

4. From the time of his expulsion, Wilkes could not be a legal candidate for the representation of any county or burgh. Votes given for one incapable of being legally a candidate, could have no legal effect. Having no legal effect, were they not, of course, null? 5. Selden has maintained, that the House of Commons have even power to impose perpetual disability upon any one of their mem

bers.

6. Only that power which cannot be exercised without the agency of others, terminates to the Commons at the end of a session. But that of which the exercise is in themselves alone, and only while they sit, endures from one general election to another. 7. It appears to have always been the law, that no member of the House of Commons, once expelled, for whatever cause, could again obtain a seat in the same parliament, if there were not some statutory exception in his favour.

8. If a county or burgh were left free to return, by continually repeated election, any obnoxious member, as often as the house should think fit to expel him, the business of parliament might be entirely interrupted by a mischievous concert between that member and his electors; and the whole attention of the Commons might be confined, even at any crisis, however important, to this ridicu lous contest. Therefore, to protect the order of its proceedings, the House of Commons must, necessarily, possess authority to prevent the re-election of any member whom they have expelled.

9. Were it even true, that the decision in favour of Mr. Luttrell, and in opposition to the claims of Mr. Wilkes and the majority of the Middlesex electors, were unjust and unconstitutional; yet, how happy, in comparison, that nation, which suffers from its government, no wrongs heavier than this?

These are the arguments of Johnson. Let us oppose to them a Summary of those of JUNIUS.

1. It was not his immorality that recommended Wilkes to the choice of the electors of Middlesex,; but his zeal and firmness in

opposing wicked ministers, and irregular acts of power; his suffer ings in the cause he had espoused, sufferings by which he was certainly recommended to the esteem and favour of his country; and the consideration that the man, whoever he might be, in respect to whom any great principle of the constitution had been violated, ought to be firmly supported by all who thought that constitution worthy of defence, till his wrongs should be redressed, and the laws, in the violation of which he was injured, should be effectually vindicated.

2. Unless there be statute or precedent to the contrary, the House of Commons can possess no other authority, over either their own members or any one else, save what, in addition to the effect of the common and statute law, and to the care of the King to maintain the peace in favour of his Commons, may be necessary to support the freedom and order of their proceedings. Having it so much in their power to discover and promote whatever new laws may be wanted; they can easily procure an act of the legislature, whenever new and more effectual protection to their legislative agency may become necessary. And, it cannot be supposed, that they should chuse to retain aught in uncertainty, which they may procure to be deci sively settled, if that were requisite, by a law of unquestionable validity.

3. But, the power of excluding an expelled member, is not indis pensably necessary to maintain the order and dignity of the proceedings of the House of Commons. Or, if it be necessary, it is at least of such a nature, that it might be defined by law, without inconvenience, either to the public in general, or to the House of Commons. Or, it may be, at least, rendered effectual by the Com mons alone, without depriving those electors of the right of voting, who may incline to send back the expelled member into the bosom of the House.

4. The power of excluding an expelled member, on account simply of his expulsion, has not been bestowed on the House of Commons by any statute, and does not appear in any precedent, to have been ever exercised by them. Neither do they appear to have ever, on any former occasion, supposed, that they had power to an nul the votes which were given in favour of candidates who had been previously disqualified by expulsion from the house.

5. All the precedents which have been quoted in defence of the

decision

decision of the house, upon the Middlesex election, have been found to be, in this case, inaccurately applied, and of course to 'contradict the very position which they have been quoted to main. tain.

6. Consequences the most fatal to the British constitution would ensue, if the House of Commons were suffered to annul at pleasure, by their sole authority, the votes of their electors. Every burgh, every county, might be forced to forego its first choice, in order to escape the danger of being deprived of the liberty to make a

second.

These are the chief arguments on both sides. It is easy to see, that those of JUNIUS exceedingly preponderate. And happily, at the time when, at the close of the American war, the Whigs of the school of Charles Fox-Charles Fox, the true political representa= tive of Temple and of Chatham-came for a short time into

.

power,

the precedent of the decision in the case of the Middlesex election was erased from the records of the House of Commons.

LETTER XXIII.

TO HIS GRACE THE DUke of bedFORD.

The family of the Duke of Bedford is one of the most illustrious ir the British Empire. From the conquest till the reign of Henry the Eighth, the Russels were but an honourable, military family,not yet enriched with extraordinary wealth, nor exalted to the peerage. Sir John Russel, a favourite servant of that monarch, created a great estate, and elevated his family to a more eminent rank. Acquisitions by marriage, still enlarged their fortunes; and, before the great civil war, the Earl of Bedford was already one of the most opulent noblemen in these kingdoms. The marriage of the only daughter and heiress of Wriothesly, Earl of Southampton—the friend of Clarendon, the son of him who was the friend of Essex and the patron of Shakespeare, one of the most faithful adherents to the royal cause during the anarchy and usurpation of the last century-made another prodigious addition to the opulence of the house of Russel. He to whom the heiress of the house of Southampton was married, was the good Lord Russel; who was put to death in the end of the reign of Charles the Second, on account, not so much of that patriotic and scarcely illegal plot in which he was actually concerned, as of a more atrocious one, involving regicide, of which the guilt was unjustly imputed to him. The inheritance of his principles, and a desire to avenge his death, naturally attached the survivors of his family to the cause of the revolution. From that era, throughout the reigns of William and Mary, and of Anne, the head of the house of Russet continued to be numbered among the most zealous and the steadiest of the Whigs. At the accession of the house of Hanover, the Russels were found among its firmest friends; and, as such, were favoured and honoured. The administration of Sir Robert Walpole had the support of the Duke of Bedford. Nor was it till after he had married the sister of Lord Gower, and had begun to be dissatisfied with the feeble administration of the Pelhams, that the Duke, to whom JUNIUS addresses this Letter, began to set himself at the head of a particular party, and to offer occasional opposition to the

measures

measures of a government that was founded upon the revolution

settlement.

The Gower family had been noted as steady Tories. High expectations had been conceived by that party, of the talents and firm Toryism of the young Lord Gouer, to whom the Nonjuror Poet, Fenton, wrote that beautiful Ode, which is far the best of his works, and indeed one of the finest Odes in the English language. One object of the poet was, to encourage the young peer in a steady adherence to Tory principles. With this view, he, in the concluding stanza, thus addresses' him,——"Honour's bright dome, on lasting columns rear'd, "Nor envy rusts, nor rolling years consume: "Loud Pæans echoing round the roof are heard; "And clouds of incense, all the void perfume. "There Phocion, Lælius, Capel, Hyde, "With Falkland seated near his side, "Fix'd by the Muse, the temple grace.

But, the hopes and the prophecy of the Tory poet were miserably frus trated. Lord Gower became, afterwards, one of the most notorious examples of apostasy from the Tory cause, for the sake of winning the favour of a Whig administration. Johnson, among others, was so much enraged at this defection, that he wished to have preserved the name of a Gower, in his Dictionary, as another appellative term for an apostate or betrayer. Yet, could not Lord Gower immediately win the favour and entire confidence, of the Whigs to whom he had deserted. The alliance between the house of Gower, and that of Bedford, was looked upon as a very inauspicious conjunction in politics, forming a new party that was neither Whig nor Tory. The pure Whiggish blood of the Russels, might seem to be contaminated by the consanguinity of the Tory Gowers; and the Goxers, on the other hand, might seem to be irrevocably detached from their ancient party, by the affinity of the house of Bedford.

Suck were the circumstances, and such the estimation of the public, in which the Duke of Bedford, with the Earls of Gower, Sandwich, Hatifax, their friends and parliamentary dependants, began to act, in strict concert, in order to make their terms with government, and to exercise a restraining influence over the Pelham-administration. At

that