are long habits of regularity, great exactness of discipline, and great confidence in the commander. Regularity may, in time, produce a kind of mechanical obedience to signals and commands, like that which the perverse Cartesians impute to animals; discipline may impress such an awe upon the mind, that any danger shall be less dreaded than the danger of punishment; and confidence in the wisdom or fortune of the general, may induce the soldiers to follow him blindly to the most dangerous enterprize. ployer, than his employer is to him. While he looks for no protection from others, he is naturally roused to be his own protector; and having nothing to abate his esteem of himself, he consequently aspires to the esteem of others. Thus every man that crowds our streets is a man of honour, disdainful of obligation, impatient of reproach, and desirous of extending his reputation among those of his own rank; and as courage is in most frequent use, the fame of courage is most eagerly pursued. From this neglect of What may be done by discipline and regu- subordination I do not deny that some inconvelarity, may be seen in the troops of the Russian niences may from time to time proceed the empress, and Prussian monarch. We find that power of the law does not always sufficiently they may be broken without confusion, and re-supply the want of reverence, or maintain the pulsed without flight. proper distinction between different ranks; but good and evil will grow up in this world together; and they who complain in peace of the insolence of the populace, must remember, that their insolence in peace is bravery in war. But the English troops have none of these requisites in an eminent degree. Regularity is by no means part of their character; they are rarely exercised, and therefore show very little dexterity in their evolutions as bodies of men, or in the manual use of their weapons as individuals; they neither are thought by others, nor by themselves more active or exact than their enemies, and therefore derive none of their courage from such imaginary superiority. The manner in which they are dispersed in quarters over the country during times of peace, naturally produces laxity of discipline: they are very little in sight of their officers; and, when they are not engaged in the slight duty of the guard, are suffered to live every man his own way. THE FALSE ALARM. 1770. ONE of the chief advantages derived by the present generation from the improvement and diffusion of philosophy, is deliverance from unneces sary terror, and exemption from false alarms. The unusual appearances, whether regular or accidental, which once spread consternation over ages of ignorance, are now the recreations of inquisitive security. The sun is no more lamented when it is eclipsed, than when it sets; and meteors play their coruscations without prognostic or prediction. The equality of English privileges, the impartiality of our laws, the freedom of our tenures, and the prosperity of our trade, dispose us very little to reverence of superiors. It is not to any The advancement of political knowledge may great esteem of the officers that the English sol-be expected to produce in time the like effects. dier is indebted for his spirit in the hour of battle; Causeless discontent and seditious violence will for perhaps it does not often happen that he grow less frequent and less formidable, as the thinks much better of his leader than of himself. science of government is better ascertained, by The French Count, who has lately published diligent study of the theory of man. the Art of War, remarks how much soldiers are animated, when they see all their dangers shared by those who were born to be their masters, and whom they consider as beings of a different rank. The Englishman despises such motives of courage; he was born without a master; and looks not on any man, however dignified by lace or titles, as deriving from nature any claims to his respect, or inheriting any qualities superior to his own. There are some, perhaps, who would imagine that every Englishman fights better than the subjects of absolute governments, because he has more to defend. But what has the English more than the French soldier? Property they are both commonly without. Liberty is, to the lowest rank of every nation, little more than the choice of working or starving; and this choice is, I suppose, equally allowed in every country. The English soldier seldom has his head very full of the constitution; nor has there been, for more than a century, any war that put the property or liberty of a single Englishman in danger. It is not, indeed, to be expected, that physical and political truth should meet with equal acceptance, or gain ground upon the world with equal facility. The notions of the naturalist find mankind in a state of neutrality, or at worst have nothing to encounter but prejudice and vanity; prejudice without malignity, and vanity without interest. But the politician's improvements are opposed by every passion that can exclude conviction or suppress it; by ambition, by avarice, by hope, and by terror, by public faction, and private animosity. It is evident, whatever be the cause, that this nation, with all its renown for speculation and for learning, has yet made little proficiency in civil wisdom. We are still so much unacquainted with our own state, and so unskilful in the pursuit of happiness, that we shudder without danger, complain without grievances, and suffer our quiet to be disturbed, and our commerce to be interrupted, by an opposition to the Govern ment, raised only by interest, and supported only by clamour, which yet has so far prevailed upon ignorance and timidity, that many favour it as reasonable, and many dread it as powerful. Whence then is the courage of the English vulgar? It proceeeds, in my opinion, from that dissolution of dependence,, which obliges every What is urged by those who have been so inman to regard his own character. While every dustrious to spread suspicion, and incite fury, man is fed by his own hands, he has no need of from one end of the kingdom to the other, may any servile arts; he may always have wages for be known by perusing the papers which have his labour; and is no less necessary to his embeen at once presented as petitions to the king, possibility of punishment. A member of the House cannot be cited for his conduct in parlia ment before any other court; and therefore if the house cannot punish him, he may attack with impunity the rights of the people, and the title of the king. and exhibited in print as remonstrances to the people. It may therefore not be improper to lay before the Public the reflections of a man who cannot favour the opposition, for he thinks it wicked, and cannot fear it, for he thinks it weak. The grievance which has produced all this tempest of outrage, the oppression in which all This exemption from the authority of other other oppressions are included, the invasion courts, was, I think, first established in favour of which has left us no property, the alarm that suf- the five members in the long parliament. It is fers no patriot to sleep in quiet, is comprised in not to be considered as a usurpation, for it is ima vote of the House of Commons, by which the plied in the principles of government. If legisla freeholders of Middlesex are deprived of a Bri-tive powers are not co-ordinate, they cease in part ton's birthright, representation in parliament. They have, indeed, received the usual writ of election, but that writ, alas! was malicious mockery; they were insulted with the form, but denied the reality, for there was one man except ed from their choice. Non de vi, neque cæde, nec veneno, Sed lis est mihi de tribus capillis. The character of the man thus fatally excepted, I have no purpose to delineate. Lampoon itself would disdain to speak ill of him of whom no man speaks well. It is sufficient that he is expelled the House of Commons, and confined in jail, as being legally convicted of sedition and impiety. That this man cannot be appointed one of the guardian counsellors of the church and state, is a grievance not to be endured. Every lover of liberty stands doubtful of the fate of posterity, because the chief county in England cannot take its representative from a jail. Whence Middlesex should obtain the right of being denominated the chief county, cannot easily be discovered; it is, indeed, the county where the chief city happens to stands, but how that city treated the favourite of Middlesex, is not yet forgotten. The county, as distinguished from the city, has no claim to particular consideration. to be legislative; and if they be co-ordinate, they are unaccountable; for to whom must that power account, which has no superior? The House of Commons is, indeed, dissoluble by the king, as the nation has of late been very clamorously told; but while it subsists it is coordinate with the other powers, and this co-ordination ceases only when the House by dissolution ceases to subsist. As the particular representatives of the people are in their public character above the control of the courts of law, they must be subject to the jurisdiction of the House; and as the House, in the exercise of its authority, can be neither directed nor restrained, its own resolutions must be its laws, at least, if there is no antecedent decision of the whole legislature. This privilege, not confirmed by any written law or positive compact, but by the resistless power of political necessity, they have exercised, probably from their first institution, but certainly, as their records informs us, from the 23d of Elizabeth, when they expelled a member for derogating from their privileges. It may perhaps be doubted, whether it was originally necessary, that this right of control and punishment should extend beyond offences in the exercise of parliamentary duty, since all other crimes are cognizable by other courts. But they That a man was in jail for sedition and im- who are the only judges of their own rights, have piety, would, I believe, have been within memo- exerted the power of expulsion on other occary a sufficient reason why he should not come sions, and when wickedness arrived at a certain out of jail a legislator. This reason, notwith-magnitude, have considered an offence against standing the mutability of fashion, happens still to operate on the House of Commons. Their notions, however strange, may be justified by a common observation, that few are mended by imprisonment, and that he whose crimes have made confinement necessary, seldom makes any other use of his enlargement than to do with greater cunning what he did before with less. But the people have been told with great confidence, that the House cannot control the right of constituting representatives: that he who can persuade lawful electors to choose him, whatever be his character, is lawfully chosen, and has a claim to a seat in parliament, from which no human authority can depose him. Here, however, the patrons of opposition are in some perplexity. They are forced to confess, that by a train of precedents sufficient to establish a custom of parliament, the House of Commons has jurisdiction over its own members; that the whole has power over individuals; and that this power has been exercised sometimes in imprisonment, and often in expulsion. That such power should reside in the House of Commons in some cases, is inevitably necessary, since it is required by every polity, that where there is a possibility of offence, there should be a society as an offence against the House. They have therefore divested notorious delinquents of their legisiative character, and delivered them up to shame or punishment, naked and unprotected, that they might not contaminate the dignity of parliament. It is allowed that a man attainted of felony cannot sit in parliament, and the Commons probably judged, that not being bound to the forms of law, they might treat those as felons, whose crimes were, in their opinion, equivalent to felo ny: and that as a known felon could not be chosen, a man so like a felon, that he could not easily be distinguished, ought to be expelled. The first laws had no law to enforce them, the first authority was constituted by itself. The power exercised by the House of Commons is of this kind, a power rooted in the principles of government, and branched out by occasional practice; a power which necessity made just, and precedents have made legal. It will occur that authority thus uncontrollable, may, in times of heat and contest, be oppressively and injuriously exerted, and that he who suffers injustice is without redress, however innocent, however miserable. The position is true, but the argument is use less. The Commons must be controlled, or be exempt from control. If they are exempt, they may do injury which cannot be redressed, if they are controlled, they are no longer legislative. If the possibility of abuse be an argument against authority, no authority ever can be established; if the actual abuse destroys its legality, there is no legal government now in the world. This power, which the Commons have so long exercised, they ventured to use once more against Mr. Wilkes, and on the 3d of February, 1769, expelled him the House, "for having printed and published a seditious libel, and three obscene and impious libels." If these imputations were just, the expulsion was surely seasonable; and that they were just, the House had reason to determine, as he had confessed himself, at the bar, the author of the libel which they term seditious, and was convicted in the King's Bench of both the publications. But the freeholders of Middlesex were of another opinion. They either thought him innocent, or were not offended by his guilt. When a writ was issued for the election of a knight for Middlesex, in the room of John Wilkes, Esq. expelled the House, his friends, on the 16th of February, chose him again. On the 17th, it was resolved, "that John Wilkes, Esq. having been in this session of parliament expelled the House, was, and is, incapable of being elected a member to serve in this present parliament." As there was no other candidate, it was resolved at the same time, that the election of the 16th was a void election. The freeholders still continued to think that no other man was fit to represent them, and on the 16th of March elected him once more. Their resolution was now so well known, that no op. ponent ventured to appear. The Commons began to find, that power without materials for operation can produce no effect. They might make the election void for ever, but if no other candidate could be found, their determination could only be negative. They, however, made void the last election, and ordered a new writ. On the 13th of April was a new election, at which Mr. Lutterel, and others, offered themselves candidates. Every method of intimidation was used, and some acts of violence were done to hinder Mr. Lutterel from appearing. He was not deterred, and the poll was taken, which exhibited for clamoured for Mr. Wilkes, honest simplicity has been cheated into fury, and only the wise have escaped infection. The greater part may justly be suspected of not believing their own position, and with them it is not necessary to dispute. They cannot be convinced who are convinced already, and it is well known that they will not be ashamed. The decision, however, by which the smaller number of votes was preferred to the greater, has perplexed the minds of some, whose opinions it were indecent to despise, and who by their integrity well deserve to have their doubts appeased. Every diffuse and complicated question may be examined by different methods, upon different principles; and that truth, which is easily found by one investigator, may be missed by another, equally honest and equally diligent. Those who inquire whether a smaller number of legal votes can elect a representative in opposi tion to a greater, must receive from every tongue the same answer. The question, therefore, must be, whether a smaller number of legal votes, shall not prevail against a greater number of votes not legal? It must be considered, that those votes only are legal which are legally given, and that those only are legally given, which are given for a legal candidate. It remains then to be discussed, whether a man expelled can be so disqualified by a vote of the House, as that he shall be no longer elegible by lawful electors? Here we must again recur, not to positive institutions, but to the unwritten law of social nature, to the great and pregnant principle of political necessity. All government supposes subjects, all authority implies obedience. To suppose in one the right to command what another has the right to refuse, is absurd and contradictory. A state so constituted must rest for ever in motionless equipoise, with, equal attractions of contrary tendency, with equal weights of power balancing each other. Laws which cannot be enforced, can neither prevent nor rectify disorders. A sentence which cannot be executed, can have no power to warn or to reform. If the commons have only the power of dismissing for a few days the man whom his constituents can immediately send back, if they can expel but cannot exclude, they have nothing more than nominal authority, to which perhaps obedience never may be paid. The representatives of our ancestors had an opinion very different; they fined and imprisoned their members; on great provocation, they disabled them for ever; and this power of pronouncing perpetual disability is maintained by Selden himself. These claims seem to have been made and allowed, when the constitution of our government had not yet been sufficiently studied. Such powers are not legal, because they are not ne cessary; and of that power which only necessity justifies, no more is to be admitted than necessity Every artifice of sedition has been since prac-obtrudes. tised to awaken discontent and inflame indig- The Commons cannot make laws, they can nation. The papers of every day have been only pass resolutions, which, like all resolutions, filled with exhortations and menaces of faction. are of force only to those that make them, and The madness has spread through all ranks and to those only while they are willing to observe through both sexes; women and children have ❘ them. The vote of the House of Commons has there fore only so far the force of a law, as that force is necessary to preserve the vote from losing its efficacy; it must begin by operating upon themselves, and extend its influence to others, only by consequences arising from the first intention. He that starts game on his own manor, may pur sue it into another. They can properly make laws only for themselves: : a member, while he keeps his seat, is subject to these laws; but when he is expelled, the jurisdiction ceases, for he is now no longer within their dominion. The disability, which a vote can superinduce to expulsion, is no more than was included in expulsion itself; it is only a declaration of the Commons, that they will perinit no longer him whom they thus censure to sit with them in parliament; a declaration made by that right which they necessarily possess, of regulating their own House, and of inflicting punishment on their own delinquents. They have therefore no other way to enforce the sentence of incapacity, than that of adhering to it. They cannot otherwise punish the candidate so disqualified for offering himself, nor the electors for accepting him. But if he has any competitor, that competitor must prevail, and if he has none, his clection will be void; for the right of the House to reject, annihilates with regard to the man so rejected the right of electing. It has been urged, that the power of the House terminates with their session; since a prisoner committed by the Speaker's warrant cannot be detained during the recess. That power indeed ceases with the session, which must operate by the agency of others, because, when they do not sit, they can employ no agent, having no longer any legal existence; but that which is exercised on themselves revives at their meeting, when the subject of that power still subsists. They can in the next session refuse to readmit him, whom in the former session they expelled. That expulsion inferred exclusion in the present case, must be, I think, easily admitted. The expulsion, and the writ issued for a new election, were in the same session, and since the House is by the rule of parliament bound for the session by a vote once passed, the expelled member cannot be admitted. He that cannot be adraitted, cannot be elected; and the votes given to a man ineligible being given in vain, the highest number for an eligible candidate becomes a majority. To these conclusions, as to most moral, and to all political positions, many objections may be made. The perpetual subject of political disquisition is not absolute, but comparative good. Of two systems of government, or two laws relating to the same subject, neither will ever be such as theoretical nicety would desire, and therefore neither can easily force its way against prejudice and obstinacy; each will have its excellences and defects, and every man, with a little help from pride, may think his own the best. sure of the House, thinking his case bard, his fault trifling, or his excellence such as overba lance it, should again choose him as still worthy of their trust, the House cannot refuse him, for his punishment has purged his fault, and the right of electors must not be violated. This is plausible, but not cogent. It is a scheme of representation, which would make a specious appearance in a political romance, but cannot be brought into practice among us, who see every day the towering head of speculation bow down unwillingly to grovelling experience. Governments formed by chance, and gradually improved by such expedients as the successive discovery of their defects happened to suggest, are never to be tried by a regular theory. They are fabrics of dissimilar materials raised by different architects upon different plans. We must be content with them as they are; should we attempt to mend their disproportions, we might easily demolish, and difficultly rebuild them. Laws are now made, and customs are established; these are our rules, and by them we must be guided. It is incontrovertibly certain, that the Commons never intended to leave electors the liberty of returning them an expelled member, for they always require one to be chosen in the room of him that is expelled, and I see not with what propriety a man can be rechosen in his own room. Expulsion, if this were its whole effect, might very often be desirable. Sedition, or obscenity, might be no greater crimes in the opinion of other electors, than in that of the freeholders of Middlesex; and many a wretch, whom his colleagues should expel, might come back persecuted into fame, and provoke with harder front a second expulsion. Many of the representatives of the people can hardly be said to have been chosen at all. Some by inheriting a borough, inherit a seat; and some sit by the favour of others, whom perhaps they may gratify by the act which provoked the expulsion. Some are safe by their popularity, and some by their alliances. None would dread expulsion, if this doctrine were re ceived, but those who bought their elections, and who would be obliged to buy them again at a higher price. But as uncertainties are to be determined by things certain, and customs to be expiained, where it is possible, by written law, the patriots have triumphed with a quotation from an act of the 4th and 5th of Anne, which permits those to be rechosen, whose seats are vacated by the acceptance of a place of profit. This they wisely consider as an expulsion, and from the permission, in this case, of a re-election, infer that every other expulsion leaves the delinquent entitled to the same indulgence. This is the paragraph. "If any person, being chosen a member of the House of Commons, shall accept of any office from the crown, during such time as he shall continue a member, his election shall be, and is hereby declared to be, void, and a new writ It seems to be the opinion of many, that ex-shall issue for a new election, as if such person pulsion is only a dismission of the representa- so accepting was naturally dead. Nevertheless, Live to his constituents, with such a testimony such person shall be capable of being again elected, against him as his sentence may comprise; and as if his place had not become void as aforethat if his constituents, notwithstanding the cen- said. ' How this favours the doctrine of readmission | themselves, that they would expel all who should by a second choice, I am not able to discover. The statute of 30 Ch. II. had enacted, "That he who should sit in the House of Commons, without taking the oaths and subscribing the test, should be disabled to sit in the House during that parliament, and a writ should issue for the election of a new member in place of the member so disabled, as if such member had naturally due? not take the test, but they could leave no aut..o rity behind them, that should oblige the next parliament to expel them. They could refuse the South Sea directors, but they could not en tail the refusal. They can disqualify by vote, but not by law; they cannot know that the sen tence of disqualification pronounced to-day, may not become void to-morrow, by the dissolution of their own House. Yet while the same par This last clause is apparently copied in the liament sits, the disqualification continues, unact of Anne, but with the common fate of imi-less the vote be rescinded, and while it so cODtators. In the act of Charles, the political death continued during the parliament; in that of Anne, it was hardly worth the while to kill the man whom the next breath was to revive. It is however, apparent, that in the opinion of the parlement, the dead-doing lines would have kept him motionless, if he had not been recovered by a kind of exception. A seat vacated, could not be regained without express permission of the same statute. The right of being chosen again to a seat thus vacated, is not enjoyed by any general right, but required a special clause, and solicitous provision. But what resemblance can imagination conceive between one man vacating his seat by a mark of favour from the crown, and another driven from it for sedition and obscenity? The acceptance of a place contaminates no character; the crown that gives it, intends to give with it always dignity, sometimes authority. The Commons, it is well known, think not worse of themselves or others for their offices of profit; yet profit employs temptation, and may expose a representative to the suspicion of his constituents; though if they still think him worthy of their confidence, they may again elect him. Such is the consequence. When a man is dismissed by law to his constituents, with new trust and new dignity, they may if they think hian incorruptible, restore him to his seat; what can follow, therefore, but that when the House drives out a varlet with public infamy, he goes away with the like permission to return? If infatuation be, as the proverb tells us, the forerunner of destruction, how near must be the ruin of a nation that can be incited against its governors by sophistry like this. I may be excused if I catch the panic, and join my groans at this alarming crisis, with the general famentation of weeping patriots. Another objection is, that the Commons, by pronouncing the sentence of disqualification, make a law, and take upon themselves the power of the whole legislature. Many quotations are then produced to prove that the House of Commons can make no laws. tinues, makes the votes, which freeholders may give to the interdicted candidate, useless and dead, since there cannot exist with respect to the same subject at the same time, an absolute power to choose, and an absolute power to reject In 1614, the attorney-general was voted incapable of a seat in the House of Commons; and the nation is triumphantly told, that though the vote never was revoked, the attorney-general is now a member. He certainly may now be a member without revocation of the vote. A law is of perpetual obligation, but a vote is nothing when the voters are gone. A law is a compact reciprocally made by the legislative powers, and therefore not to be abrogated but by all the parties. A vote is simply a resolution, which binds only him that is willing to be bound. I have thus punctiliously and minutely pur sued this disquisition, because I suspect that these reasoners, whose business is to deceive others, have sometimes deceived themselves, and I am willing to free them from their embarrass ment, though I do not expect much gratitude for my kindness. Other objections are yet remaining, for of political objections there cannot easily be an end. It has been observed, that vice is no proper cause of expulsion, for if the worst man in the House were always to be expelled, in time none would be left. But no man is expelled for being worst, he is expelled for being enormously bad; his conduct is compared, not with that of others, but with the rule of action. The punishment of expulsion being in its own nature uncertain, may be too great or too little for the fault. This must be the case of many punishments. Forfeiture of chattels is nothing to him that has no possessions. Exile itself may be accidentally a good: and indeed any punishment less than death is very different to different men. But if this precedent be admitted and established, no man can hereafter be sure that be shall be represented by him whom he would choose. One half of the House may meet early in the morning, and snatch an opportunity to expel the other, and the greater part of the naThree Acts have been cited, disabling mem-tion may, by this stratagem, be without its lawbers for different terms on different occasions; ful representatives. and it is profoundly remarked, that if the Commons could by their own privilege have made a disqualification, their jealousy of their privileges would never have admitted the concurrent sanction of the other powers. He that sees all this, sees very far. But I can tell him of greater evils yet behind. There is one possibility of wickedness, which, at this alarming crisis, has not yet been mentioned.Every one knows the malice, the subtlety, the I must for ever remind these puny contro- industry, the vigilance, and the greediness of the vertists, that those acts are laws of permanent Scots. The Scotch members are about the obligation that two of them are now in force, number sufficient to make a house. I propose and that the other expired only when it had ful-it to the consideration of the supporters of the filled its end. Such laws the Commons cannot Bill of Rights, whether there is not reason to make; they could, perhaps, have determined for suspect that these hungry intruders from the |