Great disaffection in the kingdom.—The strong symptoms of disaffection which broke out in a few months after the king's accession, and which can be ascribed to no grievance, unless the formation of a whig ministry was to be termed one, prove the taint of the late times to have been deep seated and extensive.[336] The clergy, in very many instances, were a curse rather than a blessing to those over whom they were set; and the people, while they trusted that from those polluted fountains they could draw the living waters of truth, became the dupes of factious lies and sophistry. Thus encouraged, the heir of the Stuarts landed in Scotland; and the spirit of that people being in a great measure jacobite, and very generally averse to the union, he met with such success as, had their independence subsisted, would probably have established him on the throne. But Scotland was now doomed to wait on the fortunes of her more powerful ally; and, on his invasion of England, the noisy partisans of hereditary right discredited their faction by its cowardice. Few rose in arms to support the rebellion, compared with those who desired its success, and did not blush to see the gallant savages of the Highlands shed their blood that a supine herd of priests and country gentlemen might enjoy the victory. The severity of the new government after the rebellion has been often blamed; but I know not whether, according to the usual rules of policy, it can be proved that the execution of two peers and thirty other persons, taken with arms in flagrant rebellion, was an unwarrantable excess of punishment. There seems a latent insinuation in those who have argued on the other side, as if the jacobite rebellion, being founded on an opinion of right, was more excusable than an ordinary treason—a proposition which it would not have been quite safe for the reigning dynasty to acknowledge. Clemency however is the standing policy of constitutional governments, as severity is of despotism; and, if the ministers of George I. might have extended it to part of the inferior sufferers (for surely those of higher rank were the first to be selected) with safety to their master, they would have done well in sparing him the odium that attends all political punishments.[337]

Impeachment of tory ministers.—It will be admitted on all hands, at the present day, that the charge of high treason in the impeachments against Oxford and Bolingbroke was an intemperate excess of resentment at their scandalous dereliction of the public honour and interest. The danger of a sanguinary revenge inflamed by party spirit is so tremendous that the worst of men ought perhaps to escape rather than suffer by a retrospective, or, what is no better, a constructive, extension of the law. The particular charge of treason was, that in the negotiation for peace they had endeavoured to procure the city of Tournay for the King of France; which was maintained to be an adhering to the queen's enemies within the statute of Edward III.[338] But, as this construction could hardly be brought within the spirit of that law, and the motive was certainly not treasonable or rebellious, it would have been incomparably more constitutional to treat so gross a breach of duty as a misdemeanour of the highest kind. This angry temper of the Commons led ultimately to the abandonment of the whole impeachment against Lord Oxford; the upper house, though it had committed Oxford to the Tower, which seemed to prejudge the question as to the treasonable character of the imputed offence, having two years afterwards resolved that the charge of treason should be first determined, before they would enter on the articles of less importance; a decision with which the Commons were so ill satisfied that they declined to go forward with the prosecution. The resolution of the Peers was hardly conformable to precedent, to analogy, or to the dignity of the House of Commons, nor will it perhaps be deemed binding on any future occasion; but the ministers prudently suffered themselves to be beaten rather than aggravate the fever of the people by a prosecution so full of delicate and hazardous questions.[339]

One of these questions, and by no means the least important, would doubtless have arisen upon a mode of defence alleged by the Earl of Oxford in the house, when the articles of impeachment were brought up. "My lords," he said, "if ministers of state, acting by the immediate commands of their sovereign, are afterwards to be made accountable for their proceedings, it may, one day or other, be the case of all the members of this august assembly."[340] It was indeed undeniable that the queen had been very desirous of peace, and a party, as it were, to all the counsels that tended to it. Though it was made a charge against the impeached lords, that the instructions to sign the secret preliminaries of 1711 with M. Mesnager, on the part of France, were not under the great seal, nor countersigned by any minister, they were certainly under the queen's signet, and had all the authority of her personal command. This must have brought on the yet unsettled and very delicate question of ministerial responsibility in matters where the sovereign has interposed his own command; a question better reserved, it might then appear, for the loose generalities of debate than to be determined with the precision of criminal law. Each party, in fact, had in its turn made use of the queen's personal authority as a shield; the whigs availed themselves of it to parry the attack made on their ministry, after its fall, for an alleged mismanagement of the war in Spain before the battle of Almanza;[341] and the modern constitutional theory was by no means so established in public opinion as to bear the rude brunt of a legal argument. Anne herself, like all her predecessors, kept in her own hands the reins of power; jealous, as such feeble characters usually are, of those in whom she was forced to confide (especially after the ungrateful return of the Duchess of Marlborough for the most affectionate condescension), and obstinate in her judgment, from the very consciousness of its weakness, she took a share in all business, frequently presided in meetings of the cabinet, and sometimes gave directions without their advice.[342] The defence set up by Lord Oxford would undoubtedly not be tolerated at present, if alleged in direct terms, by either house of parliament; however it may sometimes be deemed a sufficient apology for a minister, by those whose bias is towards a compliance with power, to insinuate that he must either obey against his conscience, or resign against his will.

Bill for septennial parliaments.—Upon this prevalent disaffection, and the general dangers of the established government, was founded that measure so frequently arraigned in later times, the substitution of septennial for triennial parliaments. The ministry deemed it too perilous for their master, certainly for themselves, to encounter a general election in 1717; but the arguments adduced for the alteration, as it was meant to be permanent, were drawn from its permanent expediency. Nothing can be more extravagant than what is sometimes confidently pretended by the ignorant, that the legislature exceeded its rights by this enactment; or, if that cannot legally be advanced, that it at least violated the trust of the people, and broke in upon the ancient constitution. The law for triennial parliaments was of little more than twenty years' continuance. It was an experiment which, as was argued, had proved unsuccessful; it was subject, like every other law, to be repealed entirely, or to be modified at discretion. As a question of constitutional expediency, the septennial bill was doubtless open at the time to one serious objection. Every one admitted that a parliament subsisting indefinitely during a king's life, but exposed at all times to be dissolved at his pleasure, would become far too little independent of the people, and far too much so upon the Crown. But, if the period of its continuance should thus be extended from three to seven years, the natural course of encroachment, or some momentous circumstances like the present, might lead to fresh prolongations, and gradually to an entire repeal of what had been thought so important a safeguard of its purity. Time has happily put an end to apprehensions which are not on that account to be reckoned unreasonable.[343]

Many attempts have been made to obtain a return to triennial parliaments; the most considerable of which was in 1733, when the powerful talents of Walpole and his opponents were arrayed on this great question. It has been less debated in modern times than some others connected with parliamentary reformation. So long indeed as the sacred duties of choosing the representatives of a free nation shall be perpetually disgraced by tumultuary excess, or, what is far worse, by gross corruption and ruinous profusion (evils which no effectual pains are taken to redress, and which some apparently desire to perpetuate, were it only to throw discredit upon the popular part of the constitution), it would be evidently inexpedient to curtail the present duration of parliament. But even, independently of this not insuperable objection, it may well be doubted whether triennial elections would make much perceptible difference in the course of government, and whether that difference would on the whole be beneficial. It will be found, I believe, on a retrospect of the last hundred years, that the House of Commons would have acted, in the main, on the same principles, had the elections been more frequent; and certainly the effects of a dissolution, when it has occurred in the regular order, have seldom been very important. It is also to be considered whether an assembly which so much takes to itself the character of a deliberative council on all matters of policy, ought to follow with the precision of a weather-glass the unstable prejudices of the multitude. There are many who look too exclusively at the functions of parliament, as the protector of civil liberty against the Crown; functions, it is true, most important, yet not more indispensable than those of steering a firm course in domestic and external affairs, with a circumspectness and providence for the future, which no wholly democratical government has ever yet displayed. It is by a middle position between an oligarchical senate, and a popular assembly, that the House of Commons is best preserved both in its dignity and usefulness, subject indeed to swerve towards either character by that continual variation of forces which act upon the vast machine of our commonwealth. But what seems more important than the usual term of duration, is that this should be permitted to take its course, except in cases where some great change of national policy may perhaps justify its abridgment. The Crown would obtain a very serious advantage over the House of Commons, if it should become an ordinary thing to dissolve parliament for some petty ministerial interest, or to avert some unpalatable resolution. Custom appears to have established, and with some convenience, the substitution of six for seven years as the natural life of a House of Commons; but an habitual irregularity in this respect might lead in time to consequences that most men would deprecate. And it may here be permitted to express a hope that the necessary dissolution of parliament within six months of a demise of the Crown will not long be thought congenial to the spirit of our modern government.

Peerage bill.—A far more unanimous sentence has been pronounced by posterity upon another great constitutional question, that arose under George I. Lord Sunderland persuaded the king to renounce his important prerogative of making peers; and a bill was supported by the ministry, limiting the House of Lords, after the creation of a very few more, to its actual numbers. The Scots were to have twenty-five hereditary, instead of sixteen elective, members of the house; a provision neither easily reconciled to the union, nor required by the general tenor of the bill. This measure was carried with no difficulty through the upper house, whose interests were so manifestly concerned in it. But a similar motive, concurring with the efforts of a powerful malcontent party, caused its rejection by the Commons.[344] It was justly thought a proof of the king's ignorance or indifference in everything that concerned his English Crown, that he should have consented to so momentous a sacrifice; and Sunderland was reproached for so audacious an endeavour to strengthen his private faction at the expense of the fundamental laws of the monarchy. Those who maintained the expediency of limiting the peerage, had recourse to uncertain theories as to the ancient constitution, and denied this prerogative to have been originally vested in the Crown. A more plausible argument was derived from the abuse, as it was then generally accounted, of creating at once twelve peers in the late reign, for the sole end of establishing a majority for the court; a resource which would be always at the command of successive factions, till the British nobility might become as numerous and venal as that of some European states. It was argued that there was a fallacy in concluding the collective power of the House of Lords to be augmented by its limitation, because every single peer would evidently become of more weight in the kingdom; that the wealth of the whole body must bear a less proportion to that of the nation, and would possibly not exceed that of the lower house, while on the other hand it might be indefinitely multiplied by fresh creations; that the Crown would lose one great engine of corrupt influence over the Commons, which could never be truly independent, while its principal members were looking on it as a stepping-stone to hereditary honours.[345]

Though these reasonings however are not destitute of considerable weight, and the unlimited prerogative of augmenting the peerage is liable to such abuses, at least in theory, as might overthrow our form of government; while, in the opinion of some, whether erroneous or not, it has actually been exerted with too little discretion, the arguments against any legal limitation seem more decisive. The Crown has been carefully restrained by statutes, and by the responsibility of its advisers; the Commons, if they transgress their boundaries, are annihilated by a proclamation; but against the ambition, or, what is much more likely, the perverse haughtiness of the aristocracy, the constitution has not furnished such direct securities. And, as this would be prodigiously enhanced by a consciousness of their power, and by a sense of self-importance which every peer would derive from it after the limitation of their numbers, it might break out in pretensions very galling to the people, and in an oppressive extension of privileges which were already sufficiently obnoxious and arbitrary. It is true that the resource of subduing an aristocratical faction by the creation of new peers could never be constitutionally employed, except in the case of a nearly equal balance; but it might usefully hang over the heads of the whole body, and deter them from any gross excesses of faction or oligarchical spirit. The nature of our government requires a general harmony between the two houses of parliament; and indeed any systematic opposition between them would of necessity bring on the subordination of one to the other in too marked a manner; nor had there been wanting within the memory of man, several instances of such jealous and even hostile sentiments as could only be allayed by the inconvenient remedies of a prorogation or a dissolution. These animosities were likely to revive with more bitterness, when the country gentlemen and leaders of the commons should come to look on the nobility as a class into which they could not enter, and the latter should forget more and more, in their inaccessible dignity, the near approach of that gentry to themselves in respectability of birth and extent of possessions.[346]

These innovations on the part of the new government were maintained on the score of its unsettled state, and want of hold on the national sentiment. It may seem a reproach to the house of Hanover that, connected as it ought to have been with the names most dear to English hearts, the protestant religion and civil liberty, it should have been driven to try the resources of tyranny, and to demand more authority, to exercise more control, than had been necessary for the worst of their predecessors. Much of this disaffection was owing to the cold reserve of George I., ignorant of the language, alien from the prejudices of his people, and continually absent in his electoral dominions, to which he seemed to sacrifice the nation's interest and the security of his own crown. It is certain that the acquisition of the duchies of Bremen and Verden for Hanover in 1716 exposed Great Britain to a very serious danger, by provoking the King of Sweden to join in a league for the restoration of the Pretender.[347] It might have been impossible (such was the precariousness of our revolution settlement) to have made the abdication of the electorate a condition of the house of Brunswick's succession; but the consequences of that connection, though much exaggerated by the factious and disaffected, were in various manners detrimental to English interests during these two reigns; and not the least in that they estranged the affections of the people from sovereigns whom they regarded as still foreign.

Jacobitism among the clergy.—The tory and jacobite factions, as I have observed, were powerful in the church. This had been the case ever since the revolution. The avowed non-jurors were busy with the press; and poured forth, especially during the encouragement they received in part of Anne's reign, a multitude of pamphlets, sometimes argumentative, more often virulently libellous. Their idle cry that the church was in danger, which both houses in 1704 thought fit to deny by a formal vote, alarmed a senseless multitude. Those who took the oaths were frequently known partisans of the exiled family; and those who affected to disclaim that cause, defended the new settlement with such timid or faithless arms as served only to give a triumph to the adversary. About the end of William's reign grew up the distinction of high and low churchmen; the first distinguished by great pretensions to sacerdotal power, both spiritual and temporal, by a repugnance to toleration, and by a firm adherence to the tory principle in the state; the latter by the opposite characteristics. These were pitched against each other in the two houses of convocation, an assembly which virtually ceased to exist under George I.

Convocation.—The convocation of the province of Canterbury (for that of York seems never to have been important) is summoned by the archbishop's writ, under the king's direction, along with every parliament, to which it bears analogy both in its constituent parts and in its primary functions. It consists (since the reformation) of the suffragan bishops, forming the upper house; of the deans, archdeacons, a proctor or proxy for each chapter, and two from each diocese, elected by the parochial clergy, who together constitute the lower house. In this assembly subsidies were granted, and ecclesiastical canons enacted. In a few instances under Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, they were consulted as to momentous questions affecting the national religion; the supremacy of the former was approved in 1533, the articles of faith were confirmed in 1562, by the convocation. But their power to enact fresh canons without the king's licence, was expressly taken away by a statute of Henry VIII.; and, even subject to this condition, is limited by several later acts of parliament (such as the acts of uniformity under Elizabeth and Charles II., that confirming, and therefore rendering unalterable, the thirty-nine articles, those relating to non-residence and other church matters), and still more perhaps by the doctrine gradually established in Westminster Hall, that new ecclesiastical canons are not binding on the laity, so greatly that it will ever be impossible to exercise it in any effectual manner. The convocation accordingly, with the exception of 1603, when they established some regulations, and of 1640 (an unfortunate precedent), when they attempted some more, had little business but to grant subsidies, which, however, were from the time of Henry VIII. always confirmed by an act of parliament; an intimation, no doubt, that the legislature did not wholly acquiesce in their power even of binding the clergy in a matter of property. This practice of ecclesiastical taxation was silently discontinued in 1664; at a time when the authority and pre-eminence of the church stood very high, so that it could not then have seemed the abandonment of an important privilege. From this time the clergy have been taxed at the same rate and in the same manner with the laity.[348]

It was the natural consequence of this cessation of all business, that the convocation, after a few formalities, either adjourned itself or was prorogued by a royal writ; nor had it ever, with the few exceptions above noticed, sat for more than a few days, till its supply could be voted. But, about the time of the revolution, the party most adverse to the new order sedulously propagated a doctrine that the convocation ought to be advised with upon all questions affecting the church, and ought even to watch over its interests as the parliament did over those of the kingdom.[349] The Commons had so far encouraged this faction as to refer to the convocation the great question of a reform in the liturgy for the sake of comprehension, as has been mentioned in the last chapter; and thus put a stop to the king's design. It was not suffered to sit much during the rest of that reign, to the great discontent of its ambitious leaders. The most celebrated of these, Atterbury, published a book, entitled The Rights and Privileges of an English Convocation, in answer to one by Wake, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. The speciousness of the former, sprinkled with competent learning on the subject, a graceful style, and an artful employment of topics, might easily delude, at least, the willing reader. Nothing indeed could, on reflection, appear more inconclusive than Atterbury's arguments. Were we even to admit the perfect analogy of a convocation to a parliament, it could not be doubted that the king may, legally speaking, prorogue the latter at his pleasure; and that, if neither money were required to be granted nor laws to be enacted, a session would be very short. The church had by prescription a right to be summoned in convocation; but no prescription could be set up for its longer continuance than the Crown thought expedient; and it was too much to expect that William III. was to gratify his half-avowed enemies, with a privilege of remonstrance and interposition they had never enjoyed. In the year 1701 the lower house of convocation pretended to a right of adjourning to a different day from that fixed by the upper, and consequently of holding separate sessions. They set up other unprecedented claims to independence, which were checked by a prorogation.[350] Their aim was in all respects to assimilate themselves to the House of Commons, and thus both to set up the convocation itself as an assembly collateral to parliament, and in the main independent of it, and to maintain their co-ordinate power and equality in synodical dignity to the prelates' house. The succeeding reign, however, began under tory auspices; and the convocation was in more activity for some years than at any former period. The lower house of that assembly still distinguished itself by the most factious spirit, and especially by insolence towards the bishops, who passed in general for whigs, and whom, while pretending to assert the divine rights of episcopacy, they laboured to deprive of that pre-eminence in the Anglican synod which the ecclesiastical constitution of the kingdom had bestowed on them.[351] None was more prominent in their debates than Atterbury himself, whom, in the zenith of tory influence, at the close of her reign, the queen reluctantly promoted to the see of Rochester.

The new government at first permitted the convocation to hold its sittings. But they soon excited a flame which consumed themselves by an attack on Hoadley, Bishop of Bangor, who had preached a sermon abounding with those principles concerning religious liberty, of which he had long been the courageous and powerful assertor.[352] The lower house of convocation thought fit to denounce, through the report of a committee, the dangerous tenets of this discourse, and of a work not long before published by the bishop. A long and celebrated war of pens instantly commenced, known by the name of the Bangorian controversy; managed, perhaps on both sides, with all the chicanery of polemical writers, and disgusting both from its tediousness, and from the manifest unwillingness of the disputants to speak ingenuously what they meant.[353] But, as the principles of Hoadley and his advocates appeared, in the main, little else than those of protestantism and toleration, the sentence of the laity, in the temper that was then gaining ground as to ecclesiastical subjects, was soon pronounced in their favour; and the high-church party discredited themselves by an opposition to what now pass for the incontrovertible truisms of religious liberty. In the ferment of that age, it was expedient for the state to scatter a little dust over the angry insects; the convocation was accordingly prorogued in 1717, and has never again sat for any business.[354] Those who are imbued with high notions of sacerdotal power have sometimes deplored this extinction of the Anglican great council; and though its necessity, as I have already observed, cannot possibly be defended as an ancient part of the constitution, there are not wanting specious arguments for the expediency of such a synod. It might be urged that the church, considered only as an integral member of the commonwealth, and the greatest corporation within it, might justly claim that right of managing its own affairs which belongs to every other association; that the argument from abuse is not sufficient, and is rejected with indignation when applied, as historically it might be, to representative governments and to civil liberty; that in the present state of things, no reformation even of secondary importance can be effected without difficulty, nor any looked for in greater matters, both from the indifference of the legislature, and the reluctance of the clergy to admit its interposition.

It is answered to these suggestions, that we must take experience when we possess it, rather than analogy, for our guide; that ecclesiastical assemblies have in all ages and countries been mischievous, where they have been powerful, which that of our wealthy and numerous clergy must always be; that, notwithstanding, if the convocation could be brought under the management of the state (which by the nature of its component parts might seem not unlikely), it must lead to the promotion of servile men, and the exclusion of merit still more than at present; that the severe remark of Clarendon, who observes that of all mankind none form so bad an estimate of human affairs as churchmen, is abundantly confirmed by experience; that the representation of the church in the House of Lords is sufficient for the protection of its interests; that the clergy have an influence which no other corporation enjoys over the bulk of the nation, and are apt to abuse it for the purposes of undue ascendancy, unjust restraint, or factious ambition; that the hope of any real good in reformation of the Church by its own assemblies to whatever sort of reform we may look, is utterly chimerical; finally, that as the laws now stand, which few would incline to alter, the ratification of parliament must be indispensable for any material change. It seems to admit of no doubt that these reasonings ought much to outweigh those on the opposite side.

Infringements of the toleration by statutes under Anne.—In the last four years of the queen's reign, some inroads had been made on the toleration granted to dissenters, whom the high-church party held in abhorrence. They had for a long time inveighed against what was called occasional conformity, or the compliance of dissenters with the provisions of the test act in order merely to qualify themselves for holding office, or entering into corporations. Nothing could, in the eyes of sensible men, be more advantageous to the church, if a re-union of those who had separated from it were advantageous, than this practice. Admitting even that the motive was self-interested, has an established government, in church or state, any better ally than the self-interestedness of mankind? Was it not what a presbyterian or independent minister would denounce as a base and worldly sacrifice? and if so, was not the interest of the Anglican clergy exactly in an inverse proportion to this? Any one competent to judge of human affairs would predict, what has turned out to be the case, that when the barrier was once taken down for the sake of convenience, it would not be raised again for conscience; that the most latitudinarian theory, the most lukewarm dispositions in religion, must be prodigiously favourable to the reigning sect; and that the dissenting clergy, though they might retain, or even extend, their influence over the multitude, would gradually lose it with those classes who could be affected by the test. But, even if the tory faction had been cool-headed enough for such reflections, it has, unfortunately, been sometimes less the aim of the clergy to reconcile those who differ from them than to keep them in a state of dishonour and depression. Hence, in the first parliament of Anne, a bill to prevent occasional conformity more than once passed the Commons; and, on its being rejected by the Lords, a great majority of William's bishops voting against the measure, it was sent up again in a very reprehensible manner, tacked, as it was called, to a grant of money; so that, according to the pretension of the Commons in respect to such bills, the upper house must either refuse the supply, or consent to what they disapproved.[355] This however having miscarried, and the next parliament being of better principles, nothing farther was done till 1711, when Lord Nottingham, a vehement high-churchman, having united with the whigs against the treaty of peace, they were injudicious enough to gratify him by concurring in a bill to prevent occasional conformity.[356] This was followed up by the ministry in a more decisive attack on the toleration, an act for preventing the growth of schism, which extended and confirmed one of Charles II., enforcing on all schoolmasters, and even on all teachers in private families, a declaration of conformity to the established church, to be made before the bishop, from whom a licence for exercising that profession was also to be obtained.[357] It is impossible to doubt for an instant, that if the queen's life had preserved the tory government for a few years, every vestige of the toleration would have been effaced.

These statutes, records of their adversaries' power, the whigs, now lords of the ascendant, determined to abrogate. The dissenters were unanimously zealous for the house of Hanover and for the ministry; the church of very doubtful loyalty to the Crown, and still less affection to the whig name. In the session of 1719, accordingly, the act against occasional conformity, and that restraining education, were repealed.[358] It had been the intention to have also repealed the test act; but the disunion then prevailing among the whigs had caused so formidable an opposition even to the former measures, that it was found necessary to abandon that project. Walpole, more cautious and moderate than the ministry of 1719, perceived the advantage of reconciling the church as far as possible to the royal family and to his own government; and it seems to have been an article in the tacit compromise with the bishops, who were not backward in exerting their influence for the Crown, that he should make no attempt to abrogate the laws which gave a monopoly of power to the Anglican communion. We may presume also that the prelates undertook not to obstruct the acts of indemnity passed from time to time in favour of those who had not duly qualified themselves for the offices they held; and which, after some time becoming regular, have in effect thrown open the gates to protestant dissenters, though still subject to be closed by either house of parliament, if any jealousies should induce them to refuse their assent to this annual enactment.[359]

Principles of toleration fully established.—Meanwhile the principles of religious liberty, in all senses of the word, gained strength by this eager controversy, naturally pleasing as they are to the proud independence of the English character, and congenial to those of civil freedom, which both parties, tory as much as whig, had now learned sedulously to maintain. The non-juring and high-church factions among the clergy produced few eminent men; and lost credit, not more by the folly of their notions than by their general want of scholarship and disregard of their duties. The university of Oxford was tainted to the core with jacobite prejudices; but it must be added that it never stood so low in respectability as a place of education.[360] The government, on the other hand, was studious to promote distinguished men; and doubtless the hierarchy in the first sixty years of the eighteenth century might very advantageously be compared, in point of conspicuous ability, with that of any equal period that ensued. The maxims of persecution were silently abandoned, as well as its practice; Warburton, and others of less name, taught those of toleration with as much boldness as Hoadley, but without some of his more invidious tenets; the more popular writers took a liberal tone; the names of Locke and Montesquieu acquired immense authority; the courts of justice discountenanced any endeavour to revive oppressive statutes; and, not long after the end of George the Second's reign, it was adjudged in the House of Lords, upon the broadest principles of toleration laid down by Lord Mansfield, that nonconformity with the established church is recognised by the law, and not an offence at which it connives.

Banishment of Atterbury.—Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester, the most distinguished of the party denominated high-church, became the victim of his restless character and implacable disaffection to the house of Hanover. The pretended king, for some years after his competitor's accession, had fair hopes from different powers of Europe—France, Sweden, Russia, Spain, Austria—(each of whom, in its turn, was ready to make use of this instrument), and from the powerful faction who panted for his restoration. This was unquestionably very numerous; though we have not as yet the means of fixing with certainty on more than comparatively a small number of names. But a conspiracy for an invasion from Spain and a simultaneous rising was detected in 1722, which implicated three or four peers, and among them the Bishop of Rochester.[361] The evidence, however, though tolerably convincing, being insufficient for a verdict at law, it was thought expedient to pass a bill of pains and penalties against this prelate, as well as others against two of his accomplices. The proof, besides many corroborating circumstances, consisted in three letters relative to the conspiracy, supposed to be written by his secretary Kelly, and appearing to be dictated by the bishop. He was deprived of his see, and banished the kingdom for life.[362] This met with strong opposition, not limited to the enemies of the royal family, and is open to the same objection as the attainder of Sir John Fenwick; the danger of setting aside those precious securities against a wicked government which the law of treason has furnished. As a vigorous assertion of the state's authority over the church we may commend the policy of Atterbury's deprivation; but perhaps this was ill purchased by a mischievous precedent. It is however the last act of a violent nature in any important matter, which can be charged against the English legislature.

Decline of the Jacobites.—No extensive conspiracy of the jacobite faction seems ever to have been in agitation after the fall of Atterbury. The Pretender had his emissaries perpetually alert; and it is understood that an enormous mass of letters from his English friends is in existence;[363] but very few had the courage, or rather folly, to plunge into so desperate a course as rebellion. Walpole's prudent and vigilant administration, without transgressing the boundaries of that free constitution for which alone the house of Brunswick had been preferred, kept in check the disaffected. He wisely sought the friendship of Cardinal Fleury, aware that no other power in Europe than France could effectually assist the banished family. After his own fall and the death of Fleury, new combinations of foreign policy arose; his successors returned to the Austrian connection; a war with France broke out; the grandson of James II. became master, for a moment, of Scotland, and even advanced to the centre of this peaceful and unprotected kingdom. But this was hardly more ignominious to the government than to the jacobites themselves; none of them joined the standard of their pretended sovereign; and the rebellion of 1745 was conclusive, by its own temporary success, against the possibility of his restoration.[364] From this time the government, even when in search of pretexts for alarm, could hardly affect to dread a name grown so contemptible as that of the Stuart party. It survived however for the rest of the reign of George II. in those magnanimous compotations, which had always been the best evidence of its courage and fidelity.

Prejudices against the reigning family.—Though the jacobite party had set before its eyes an object most dangerous to the public tranquillity, and which, could it have been attained, would have brought on again the contention of the seventeenth century; though, in taking oaths to a government against which they were in conspiracy, they showed a systematic disregard of obligation, and were as little mindful of allegiance, in the years 1715 and 1745, to the prince they owned in their hearts, as they had been to him whom they had professed to acknowledge, it ought to be admitted that they were rendered more numerous and formidable than was necessary by the faults of the reigning kings or of their ministers. They were not actuated for the most part (perhaps with very few exceptions) by the slavish principles of indefeasible right, much less by those of despotic power. They had been so long in opposition to the court, they had so often spoken the language of liberty, that we may justly believe them to have been its friends. It was the policy of Walpole to keep alive the strongest prejudice in the mind of George II., obstinately retentive of prejudice, as such narrow and passionate minds always are, against the whole body of the tories. They were ill received at court, and generally excluded, not only from those departments of office which the dominant party have a right to keep in their power, but from the commission of the peace, and every other subordinate trust.[365] This illiberal and selfish course retained many, no doubt, in the Pretender's camp, who must have perceived both the improbability of his restoration, and the difficulty of reconciling it with the safety of our constitution. He was indeed, as well as his son, far less worthy of respect than the contemporary Brunswick kings: without absolutely wanting capacity or courage, he gave the most undeniable evidence of his legitimacy by constantly resisting the counsels of wise men, and yielding to those of priests; while his son, the fugitive of Culloden, despised and deserted by his own party, insulted by the court of France, lost with the advance of years even the respect and compassion which wait on unceasing misfortune, the last sad inheritance of the house of Stuart.[366] But they were little known in England, and from unknown princes men are prone to hope much: if some could anticipate a redress of every evil from Frederic Prince of Wales, whom they might discover to be destitute of respectable qualities, it cannot be wondered at that others might draw equally flattering prognostics from the accession of Charles Edward. It is almost certain that, if either the claimant or his son had embraced the protestant religion, and had also manifested any superior strength of mind, the German prejudices of the reigning family would have cost them the throne, as they did the people's affections. Jacobitism, in the great majority, was one modification of the spirit of liberty burning strongly in the nation at this period. It gave a rallying point to that indefinite discontent, which is excited by an ill opinion of rulers, and to that disinterested, though ignorant patriotism which boils up in youthful minds. The government in possession was hated, not as usurped, but as corrupt; the banished line was demanded, not so much because it was legitimate, but because it was the fancied means of redressing grievances and regenerating the constitution. Such notions were doubtless absurd; but it is undeniable that they were common, and had been so almost from the revolution. I speak only, it will be observed, of the English jacobites; in Scotland the sentiments of loyalty and national pride had a vital energy, and the Highland chieftains gave their blood, as freely as their southern allies did their wine, for the cause of their ancient kings.

No one can have looked in the most cursory manner at the political writings of these two reigns, or at the debates of parliament, without being struck by the continual predictions that our liberties were on the point of extinguishment, or at least by apprehensions of their being endangered. It might seem that little or nothing had been gained by the revolution, and by the substitution of an elective dynasty. This doubtless it was the interest of the Stuart party to maintain or insinuate; and, in the conflict of factions, those who, with far opposite views, had separated from the court, seemed to lend them aid. The declamatory exaggerations of that able and ambitious body of men who co-operated against the ministry of Sir Robert Walpole have long been rejected; and perhaps in the usual reflux of popular opinion, his domestic administration (for in foreign policy his views, so far as he was permitted to act upon them, appear to have been uniformly judicious) has obtained of late rather an undue degree of favour. I have already observed that, for the sake of his own ascendancy in the cabinet, he kept up unnecessarily the distinctions of the whig and tory parties, and thus impaired the stability of the royal house, which it was his chief care to support. And, though his government was so far from anything oppressive or arbitrary that, considered either relatively to any former times, or to the extensive disaffection known to subsist, it was uncommonly moderate; yet, feeling or feigning alarm at the jacobite intrigues on the one hand, at the democratic tone of public sentiment and of popular writings on the other, he laboured to preserve a more narrow and oligarchical spirit than was congenial to so great and brave a people, and trusted not enough, as indeed is the general fault of ministers, to the sway of good sense and honesty over disinterested minds. But, as he never had a complete influence over his master, and knew that those who opposed him had little else in view than to seize the reins of power and manage them worse, his deviations from the straight course are more pardonable.

The clamorous invectives of this opposition, combined with the subsequent dereliction of avowed principles by many among them when in power, contributed more than anything else in our history to cast obloquy and suspicion, or even ridicule, on the name and occupation of patriots. Men of sordid and venal characters always rejoice to generalise so convenient a maxim as the non-existence of public virtue. It may not however be improbable, that many of those who took a part in this long contention, were less insincere than it has been the fashion to believe, though led too far at the moment by their own passions, as well as by the necessity of colouring highly a picture meant for the multitude, and reduced afterwards to the usual compromises and concessions, without which power in this country is ever unattainable. But waiving a topic too generally historical for the present chapter, it will be worth while to consider what sort of ground there might be for some prevalent subjects of declamation; and whether the power of government had not, in several respects, been a good deal enhanced since the beginning of the century. By the power of government I mean not so much the personal authority of the sovereign as that of his ministers, acting perhaps without his directions; which, since the reign of William, is to be distinguished, if we look at it analytically, from the monarchy itself.

I. The most striking acquisition of power by the Crown in the new model of government, if I may use such an expression, is the permanence of a regular military force. The reader cannot need to be reminded that no army existed before the civil war, that the guards in the reign of Charles II. were about 5000 men, that in the breathing-time between the peace of Ryswick and the war of the Spanish succession, the Commons could not be brought to keep up more than 7000 troops. Nothing could be more repugnant to the national prejudices than a standing army. The tories, partly from regard to the ancient usage of the constitution, partly, no doubt, from a factious or disaffected spirit, were unanimous in protesting against it. The most disinterested and zealous lovers of liberty came with great suspicion and reluctance into what seemed so perilous an innovation. But the court, after the accession of the house of Hanover, had many reasons for insisting upon so great an augmentation of its power and security. It is remarkable to perceive by what stealthy advances this came on. Two long wars had rendered the army a profession for men in the higher and middling classes, and familiarised the nation to their dress and rank; it had achieved great honour for itself and the English name; and in the nature of mankind the patriotism of glory is too often an overmatch for that of liberty. The two kings were fond of warlike policy, the second of war itself; their schemes, and those of their ministers, demanded an imposing attitude in negotiation, which an army, it was thought, could best give; the cabinet was for many years entangled in alliances, shifting sometimes rapidly, but in each combination liable to produce the interruption of peace. In the new system which rendered the houses of parliament partakers in the executive administration, they were drawn themselves into the approbation of every successive measure, either on the propositions of ministers, or as often happens more indirectly, but hardly less effectually, by passing a negative on those of their opponents.

Permanent military force.—The number of troops for which a vote was annually demanded, after some variations, in the first years of George I., was, during the whole administration of Sir Robert Walpole, except when the state of Europe excited some apprehension of disturbance, rather more than 17,000 men, independent of those on the Irish establishment, but including the garrisons of Minorca and Gibraltar. And this continued with little alteration to be our standing army in time of peace during the eighteenth century.

This army was always understood to be kept on foot, as it is still expressed in the preamble of every mutiny bill, for better preserving the balance of power in Europe. The Commons would not for an instant admit that it was necessary as a permanent force, in order to maintain the government at home. There can be no question however that the court saw its advantage in this light; and I am not perfectly sure that some of the multiplied negotiations on the continent in that age were not intended as a pretext for keeping up the army, or at least as a means of exciting alarm for the security of the established government. In fact, there would have been rebellions in the time of George I., not only in Scotland, which perhaps could not otherwise have been preserved, but in many parts of the kingdom, had the parliament adhered with too pertinacious bigotry to their ancient maxims. Yet these had such influence that it was long before the army was admitted by every one to be perpetual; and I do not know that it has ever been recognised as such in our statutes. Mr. Pulteney, so late as 1732, a man neither disaffected nor democratical, and whose views extended no farther than a change of hands, declared that he "always had been, and always would be, against a standing army of any kind; it was to him a terrible thing, whether under the denomination of parliamentary or any other. A standing army is still a standing army, whatever name it be called by; they are a body of men distinct from the body of the people; they are governed by different laws; blind obedience and an entire submission to the orders of their commanding officer is their only principle. The nations around us are already enslaved, and have been enslaved by those very means; by means of their standing armies they have every one lost their liberties; it is indeed impossible that the liberties of the people can be preserved in any country where a numerous standing army is kept up."[367]

This wholesome jealousy, though it did not prevent what was indeed for many reasons not to be dispensed with, the establishment of a regular force, kept it within bounds which possibly the administration, if left to itself, would have gladly overleaped. A clause in the mutiny bill, first inserted in 1718, enabling courts-martial to punish mutiny and desertion with death, which had hitherto been only cognisable as capital offences by the civil magistrate, was carried by a very small majority in both houses.[368] An act was passed in 1735, directing that no troops should come within two miles of any place, except the capital or a garrisoned town, during an election;[369] and on some occasions, both the Commons and the courts of justice showed that they had not forgotten the maxims of their ancestors as to the supremacy of the civil power.[370] A more important measure was projected by men of independent principles, at once to secure the kingdom against attack, invaded as it had been by rebels in 1745, and thrown into the most ignominious panic on the rumours of a French armament in 1756, to take away the pretext for a large standing force, and perhaps to furnish a guarantee against any evil purposes to which in future times it might be subservient, by the establishment of a national militia, under the sole authority, indeed of the Crown, but commanded by gentlemen of sufficient estates, and not liable, except in war, to be marched out of its proper county. This favourite plan, with some reluctance on the part of the government, was adopted in 1757.[371] But though, during the long periods of hostilities which have unfortunately ensued, this embodied force had doubtless placed the kingdom in a more respectable state of security, it has not much contributed to diminish the number of our regular forces; and, from some defects in its constitution, arising out of too great attention to our ancient local divisions, and of too indiscriminate a dispensation with personal service, which has filled the ranks with the refuse of the community, the militia has grown unpopular and burthensome, rather considered of late by the government as a means of recruiting the army than as worthy of preservation in itself, and accordingly thrown aside in time of peace; so that the person who acquired great popularity as the author of this institution, lived to see it worn out and gone to decay, and the principles, above all, upon which he had brought it forward, just enough remembered to be turned into ridicule. Yet the success of that magnificent organisation which, in our own time, has been established in France, is sufficient to evince the possibility of a national militia; and we know with what spirit such a force was kept up for some years in this country, under the name of volunteers and yeomanry, on its only real basis, that of property, and in such local distribution as convenience pointed out.

Nothing could be more idle, at any time since the revolution, than to suppose that the regular army would pull the speaker out of his chair, or in any manner be employed to confirm a despotic power in the Crown. Such power, I think, could never have been the waking dream of either king or minister. But as the slightest inroads upon private rights and liberties are to be guarded against in any nation that deserves to be called free, we should always keep in mind not only that the military power is subordinate to the civil, but, as this subordination must cease where the former is frequently employed, that it should never be called upon in aid of the peace without sufficient cause. Nothing would more break down this notion of the law's supremacy than the perpetual interference of those who are really governed by another law; for the doctrine of some judges, that the soldier, being still a citizen, acts only in preservation of the public peace, as another citizen is bound to do, must be felt as a sophism, even by those who cannot find an answer to it. And, even in slight circumstances, it is not conformable to the principles of our government to make that vain display of military authority which disgusts us so much in some continental kingdoms. But, not to dwell on this, it is more to our immediate purpose that the executive power has acquired such a coadjutor in the regular army that it can, in no probable emergency, have much to apprehend from popular sedition. The increased facilities of transport, and several improvements in military art and science, which will occur to the reader, have in later times greatly enhanced this advantage.

II. It must be apparent to every one that since the restoration, and especially since the revolution, an immense power has been thrown into the scale of both houses of parliament, though practically in more frequent exercise by the lower, in consequence of their annual session during several months, and of their almost unlimited rights of investigation, discussion, and advice. But, if the Crown should by any means become secure of an ascendancy in this assembly, it is evident that, although the prerogative, technically speaking, might be diminished, the power might be the same, or even possibly more efficacious; and that this result must be proportioned to the degree and security of such an ascendancy. A parliament absolutely, and in all conceivable circumstances, under the control of the sovereign, whether through intimidation or corrupt subservience, could not, without absurdity, be deemed a co-ordinate power, or, indeed, in any sense, a restraint upon his will. This is however an extreme supposition, which no man, unless both grossly factious and ignorant, will ever pretend to have been realised. But, as it would equally contradict notorious truth to assert that every vote has been disinterested and independent, the degree of influence which ought to be permitted, or which has at any time existed, becomes one of the most important subjects in our constitutional policy.

I have mentioned in the last chapter both the provisions inserted in the act of settlement, with the design of excluding altogether the possessors of public office from the House of Commons, and the modifications of them by several acts of the queen. These were deemed by the country party so inadequate to restrain the dependents of power from overspreading the benches of the Commons that perpetual attempts were made to carry the exclusive principle to a far greater length. In the two next reigns, if we can trust to the uncontradicted language of debate, or even to the descriptions of individuals in the lists of each parliament, we must conclude that a very undue proportion of dependents on the favour of government were made its censors and counsellors. There was still, however, so much left of an independent spirit, that bills for restricting the number of placemen, or excluding pensioners, met always with countenance; they were sometimes rejected by very slight majorities; and, after a time, Sir Robert Walpole found it expedient to reserve his opposition for the surer field of the other house.[372] After his fall, it was imputed with some justice to his successors, that they shrunk in power from the bold reformation which they had so frequently endeavoured; the king was indignantly averse to all retrenchment of his power, and they wanted probably both the inclination and the influence to cut off all corruption. Yet we owe to this ministry the place bill of 1743, which, derided as it was at the time, seems to have had a considerable effect; excluding a great number of inferior officers from the House of Commons, which has never since contained so revolting a list of court-deputies as it did in the age of Walpole.[373]

Secret corruption.—But while this acknowledged influence of lucrative office might be presumed to operate on many staunch adherents of the actual administration, there was always a strong suspicion, or rather a general certainty, of absolute corruption. The proofs in single instances could never perhaps be established; which, of course, is not surprising. But no one seriously called in question the reality of a systematic distribution of money by the Crown to the representatives of the people; nor did the corrupters themselves, in whom the crime seems always to be deemed less heinous, disguise it in private.[374] It is true that the appropriation of supplies, and the established course of the exchequer, render the greatest part of the public revenue secure from misapplication; but, under the head of secret service money, a very large sum was annually expended without account, and some other parts of the civil list were equally free from all public examination.[375] The committee of secrecy appointed after the resignation of Sir Robert Walpole endeavoured to elicit some distinct evidence of this misapplication; but the obscurity natural to such transactions, and the guilty collusion of subaltern accomplices, who shrouded themselves in the protection of the law, defeated every hope of punishment, or even personal disgrace.[376] This practice of direct bribery continued, beyond doubt, long afterwards, and is generally supposed to have ceased about the termination of the American war.

There is hardly any doctrine with respect to our government more in fashion than that a considerable influence of the Crown (meaning of course a corrupt influence) in both houses of parliament, and especially in the Commons, has been rendered indispensable by the vast enhancement of their own power over the public administration. It is doubtless most expedient that many servants of the Crown should be also servants of the people; and no man who values the constitution would separate the functions of ministers of state from those of legislators. The glory that waits on wisdom and eloquence in the senate should always be the great prize of an English statesman, and his high road to the sovereign's favour. But the maxim that private vices are public benefits is as sophistical as it is disgusting; and it is self-evident, both that the expectation of a clandestine recompense, or what in effect is the same thing, of a lucrative office, cannot be the motive of an upright man in his vote, and that if an entire parliament should be composed of such venal spirits, there would be an end of all control upon the Crown. There is no real cause to apprehend that a virtuous and enlightened government would find difficulty in resting upon the reputation justly due to it; especially when we throw into the scale that species of influence which must ever subsist, the sentiment of respect and loyalty to a sovereign, of friendship and gratitude to a minister, of habitual confidence in those intrusted with power, of averseness to confusion and untried change, which have in fact more extensive operation than any sordid motives, and which must almost always render them unnecessary.

III. Commitments for breach of privilege.—The co-operation of both houses of parliament with the executive government enabled the latter to convert to its own purpose what had often in former times been employed against it, the power of inflicting punishment for breach of privilege. But as the subject of parliamentary privilege is of no slight importance, it will be convenient on this occasion to bring the whole before the reader in as concise a summary as possible, distinguishing the power, as it relates to offences committed by members of either house, or against them singly, or the houses of parliament collectively, or against the government and the public.

1. It has been the constant practice of the House of Commons to repress disorderly or indecent behaviour by a censure delivered through the speaker. Instances of this are even noticed in the journals under Edward VI. and Mary; and it is in fact essential to the regular proceedings of any assembly. In the former reign they also committed one of their members to the Tower. But in the famous case of Arthur Hall in 1581, they established the first precedent of punishing one of their own body for a printed libel derogatory to them as a part of the legislature; and they inflicted the threefold penalty of imprisonment, fine, and expulsion.[377] From this time forth it was understood to be the law and usage of parliament, that the Commons might commit to prison any one of their members for misconduct in the house, or relating to it. The right of imposing a fine was very rarely asserted after the instance of Hall. But that of expulsion, no earlier precedent whereof has been recorded, became as indubitable as frequent and unquestioned usage could render it. It was carried to a great excess by the long parliament, and again in the year 1680. These, however, were times of extreme violence; and the prevailing faction had an apology in the designs of the court, which required an energy beyond the law to counteract them. The offences, too, which the whigs thus punished in 1680, were in their effect against the power and even existence of parliament. The privilege was far more unwarrantably exerted by the opposite party in 1714, against Sir Richard Steele, expelled the house for writing the "Crisis," a pamphlet reflecting on the ministry. This was, perhaps, the first instance wherein the House of Commons so identified itself with the executive administration, independently of the sovereign's person, as to consider itself libelled by those who impugned its measures.[378]

In a few instances an attempt was made to carry this farther, by declaring the party incapable of sitting in parliament. It is hardly necessary to remark that upon this rested the celebrated question of the Middlesex election in 1769. If a few precedents, and those not before the year 1680, were to determine all controversies of constitutional law, it is plain enough from the journals that the house have assumed the power of incapacitation. But as such an authority is highly dangerous and unnecessary for any good purpose, and as, according to all legal rules, so extraordinary a power could not be supported except by a sort of prescription which cannot be shown, the final resolution of the House of Commons, which condemned the votes passed in times of great excitement, appears far more consonant to just principles.

2. The power of each house of parliament over those who do not belong to it is of a more extensive consideration, and has lain open, in some respects, to more doubt than that over its own members. It has been exercised, in the first place, very frequently, and from an early period, in order to protect the members personally, and in their properties, from anything which has been construed to interfere with the discharge of their functions. Every obstruction in these duties, by assaulting, challenging, insulting any single representative of the Commons, has from the middle of the sixteenth century downwards, that is, from the beginning of their regular journals, been justly deemed a breach of privilege, and an offence against the whole body. It has been punished generally by commitment, either to the custody of the house's officer, the serjeant-at-arms, or to the king's prison. This summary proceeding is usually defended by a technical analogy to what are called attachments for contempt, by which every court of record is entitled to punish by imprisonment, if not also by fine, any obstruction to its acts or contumacious resistance of them. But it tended also to raise the dignity of parliament in the eyes of the people, at times when the government, and even the courts of justice, were not greatly inclined to regard it; and has been also a necessary safeguard against the insolence of power. The majority are bound to respect, and indeed have respected, the rights of every member, however obnoxious to them, on all questions of privilege. Even in the case most likely to occur in the present age, that of libels, which by no unreasonable stretch come under the head of obstructions, it would be unjust that a patriotic legislator, exposed to calumny for his zeal in the public cause, should be necessarily driven to a troublesome and uncertain process at law, when the offence so manifestly affects the real interests of parliament and the nation. The application of this principle must of course require a discreet temper, which was not perhaps always observed in former times, especially in the reign of William III. Instances at least of punishment for breach of privilege by personal reflections are never so common as in the journals of that turbulent period.

The most usual mode, however, of incurring the animadversion of the house was by molestations in regard to property. It was the most ancient privilege of the Commons to be free from all legal process, during the term of the session and for forty days before and after, except on charges of treason, felony, or breach of the peace. I have elsewhere mentioned the great case of Ferrers, under Henry VIII., wherein the house first, as far as we know, exerted the power of committing to prison those who had been concerned in arresting one of its members; and have shown that, after some little intermission, this became their recognised and customary right. Numberless instances occur of its exercise.[379] It was not only a breach of privilege to serve any sort of process upon them, but to put them under the necessity of seeking redress at law for any civil injury. Thus abundant cases are found in the journals, where persons have been committed to prison for entering on the estates of members, carrying away timber, lopping trees, digging coal, fishing in their waters. Their servants, and even their tenants, if the trespass were such as to affect the landlord's property, had the same protection.[380] The grievance of so unparalleled an immunity must have been notorious, since it not only suspended at least the redress of creditors, but enabled rapacious men to establish in some measure unjust claims in respect of property; the alleged trespasses being generally founded on some disputed right. An act however was passed, rendering the members of both houses liable to civil suits during the prorogation of parliament.[381] But they long continued to avenge the private injuries, real or pretended, of their members. On a complaint of breach of privilege by trespassing on a fishery (Jan. 25, 1768), they heard evidence on both sides, and determined that no breach of privilege had been committed; thus indirectly taking on them the decision of a freehold right. A few days after they came to a resolution, "that in case of any complaint of a breach of privilege, hereafter to be made by any member of this house, if the house shall adjudge there is no ground for such complaint, the house will order satisfaction to the person complained of for his costs and expenses incurred by reason of such complaint."[382] But little opportunity was given to try the effect of this resolution, an act having passed in two years afterwards, which has altogether taken away the exemption from legal process, except as to the immunity from personal arrest, which still continues to be the privilege of both houses of parliament.[383]

3. A more important class of offences against privilege is of such as affect either house of parliament collectively. In the reign of Elizabeth we have an instance of one committed for disrespectful words against the Commons. A few others, either for words spoken or published libels, occur in the reign of Charles I. even before the long parliament; but those of 1641 can have little weight as precedents, and we may say nearly the same of the unjustifiable proceedings in 1680. Even since the revolution we find too many proofs of encroaching pride or intemperate passion, to which a numerous assembly is always prone, and which the prevalent doctrine of the house's absolute power in matters of privilege has not contributed much to restrain. The most remarkable may be briefly noticed.