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sionate excitement, there had succeeded a dead calm, on whose tideless surface venality and corruption alone floated the dark passions of revenge and vindictive justice lay buried beneath, twenty fathoms deep. A House of Commons, which had no spirit to debate, and could scarcely find courage to divide, would not visit the sins of its offending members with severity, and discovered that apathy and indifference were less troublesome remedies, because unattended with personal annoyance, than expulsion. The Spartan virtues of the Speaker, Arthur Onslow, vainly appealed to their sense of dignity that they would expel Admiral Byng before he was shot, lest his death by the sentence of the court-martial should cover with disgrace his brother members;" they had not sufficient resolution to save the martyr, and would not take the trouble to expel him.

With the loftier public virtue, and the more stirring events of the reign of George III., a similar spirit of gentleness was interfused; and it is a memorable fact, that fewer members were expelled during the sixty years of his long reign than in two years of the first of his race." The betrayal of the House, in its struggle with Wilkes, into the erroneous doctrine which the authority of Selden and the precedent of Walpole had established, that the expression of a member must involve the further punishment of exclusion, that incapacity might be pronounced by one branch of the legislature, taught a salutary caution; and the power of public opinion, which caused a series of resolutions in contravention of the law of parlia

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▾ The three years infamous for expulsions were 1642, 1680, and 1721.

ment to be erased from their journals, made itself felt and respected in additional temper and moderation, when the tumult of alarm and exasperation of popular fury had passed away. In order that it might retain, the House in future most warily desisted from abusing, its power, and few can question the rare instances in which it was afterwards asserted over guilty members.

In 1796, Colonel Cawthorne having been found guilty by a court-martial of embezzlement, cashiered, and rendered unfit to serve the king in any military capacity whatever, was expelled for his said offence, as an unfit person to hold a seat in parliament, 108 members against 12 voting this resolution. Sixteen years later, in 1812, Benjamin Walsh, a stock-jobber, having been convicted at the Old Bailey of a fraud upon Sir Thomas Plomer, met with the same fate; the plea, in mitigation, that he had paid 4000 guineas for his seat for Wooton Bassett, not availing to save him, notwithstanding the wishes and recorded opinions of Sir Samuel Romilly. "I thought it extremely dangerous," he states in his diary, "that the House should assume to itself a power of expelling any of its members merely on the ground of their having been guilty of gross immorality. Such a censorial power cannot be intrusted to a popular assembly, acting, as it often necessarily must act, under the influence of political prejudice, without being liable to the greatest abuse." That this is no theoretical danger the journals of the House abundantly prove; but the moral necessity of freeing a body of gentlemen, whose

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power rests on public respect, from the contagion attaching to the presence of proved delinquents, confessed libellers, convicted felons, outweighs this danger. It is a power obnoxious to, and made a vehicle of abuse, but still a power which, in the nervous language of Dr. Johnson,a "necessity made just, and precedents have made legal. When wickedness arrives at a certain magnitude, an offence against society may be considered as an offence against the House. They have therefore divested notorious delinquents of their legislative character, and delivered them up to shame and punishment, naked and unprotected, that they might not contaminate the dignity of parliament."

From these motives, in 1814, Lord Cochrane, upon his conviction for a conspiracy to commit a fraud on the Stock Exchange, was expelled, but re-elected for Westminster. He had met with a hard measure of justice, and, under feelings of strong and pardonable resentment, moved an impeachment against his severe judge, Lord Ellenborough. He found a seconder in Sir Francis Burdett, his colleague, but none besides. Thirty years have happily since intervened without a similar infliction. The House, as a body of gentlemen, have become tender of the honour of gentlemen. The power to expel remains as undoubted as the exercise of it should be rare.

One indignity which placed members and strangers alike under the servile yoke, lingered till the middle of the last century-the odious form of compelling all parties to hear their sentence "meekly kneeling upon

Dr. Johnson's False Alarm.
Parliamentary Debates, vol. xviii.

their knees." A long and dark series of precedents established, that all must learn their doom, and in some cases receive their charge, on their knees. There was, indeed, a single noble exception, that of the loya patriot, the sturdy Welch judge, David Jenkins, who absolutely refused to kneel, and harangued the Speaker in language that made his hearers quail." Mr. Speaker, since you and this House have renounced all your duty and allegiance to your Sovereign, and natural liege lord the King, and the King, and are become a den of thieves, should I bow myself in this house of Rimmon, the Lord would not pardon me in this thing." The House, we are told, fell into such an uproar upon hearing this cartel of defiance, that for half an hour they could not be reduced into any order, sometimes ten, sometimes twenty, were speaking together. The malignant was voted guilty of treason without trial, and sentenced to die; but Harry Martin averted his fate by good-humouredly moving that the House would suspend the day of execution, and in the mean time force him to live in spite of his teeth.

After the interval of a century, during which all offenders, real or supposed, against the majesty of Parliament, had continued to kneel without open resistance, a similar scene of rage was re-enacted in February, 1751, on the peremptory refusal of Mr. Alexander Murray, brother of Lord Elibank, to kneel at the bar to receive his sentence. He was charged with having, during the late Westminster election, incited. the High Bailiff, saying, "Will nobody knock the dog down?" but the words were not satisfactorily proved, and Mr. Murray persisted in denying that he had ever

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uttered them. The House, however, acted on the complaint of the returning officer, and resolved that he should be committed to Newgate, and receive his sentence on his knees-an indignity to which he peremptorily declared nothing on earth should ever induce him to submit. In vain did Mr. Pelham explain that kneeling was no acknowledgment of guilt, but only a testimony of respect: in vain did the Speaker, horrified at his insubordination, exclaim in his deepest tones of displeasure, "On your knees, Sir! you must kneel down." Mr. Murray persisted in standing, and the sentence could not be spoken. The House, in a tumult of indignation at such contumacy, resolved, "That Mr. Murray, having in a most insolent and audacious manner, at the bar, absolutely refused to be upon his knees, is guilty of a high and most dangerous contempt of the authority and privilege of this House."

If bitter words and strong epithets could have availed 'to whip the rebellious Adam out of him,' these resolutions might perhaps have sufficed. The Speaker strongly urged ulterior measures, insisting that, if insubordination of this alarming character were to pass without exemplary chastisement, all respect to his authority was at an end. It was therefore ordered that Mr. Murray should be committed close prisoner to Newgate, and that no one should have access to him without leave-that he should not have the use of pen, ink, or paper, and that a committee should consider and report what further methods might be taken. As the rack and thumb-screws were abolished, and the power of inquisitors "before torture, between torture, in torture, and after torture," had passed away Horace Walpole's Letters.

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