e to restrain the rights of all his
subjects by act of Parliament, and to vest those high and eminent
prerogatives even in a particular company of merchants, there has been
no question. We beg leave most humbly to claim as our right, and as a
right which this House has always used, to frame such bills for the
regulation of that commerce, and of the territories held by the East
India Company, and everything relating to them, as to our discretion
shall seem fit; and we assert and maintain that therein we follow, and
do not innovate on, the Constitution.

That his Majesty's ministers, misled by their ambition, have
endeavored, if possible, to form a faction in the country against the
popular part of the Constitution; and have therefore thought proper to
add to their slanderous accusation against a House of Parliament,
relative to his Majesty's prerogative, another of a different nature,
calculated for the purpose of raising fears and jealousies among the
corporate bodies of the kingdom, and of persuading uninformed persons
belonging to those corporations to look to and to make addresses to
them, as protectors of their rights, under their several charters, from
the designs which they, without any ground, charged the then House of
Commons to have formed against _charters in general_. For this purpose
they have not scrupled to assert that the exertion of his Majesty's
prerogative in the late precipitate change in his administration, and
the dissolution of the late Parliament, were measures adopted in order
to rescue the people and their rights out of the hands of the House of
Commons, their representatives.

We trust that his Majesty's subjects are not yet so far deluded as to
believe that the charters, or that any other of their local or general
privileges, can have a solid security in any place but where that
security has always been looked for, and always found,--in the House of
Commons. Miserable and precarious indeed would be the state of their
franchises, if they were to find no defence but from that quarter from
whence they have always been attacked![66] But the late House of
Commons, in passing that bill, made no attack upon any powers or
privileges, except such as a House of Commons has frequently attacked,
and will attack, (and they trust, in the end, with their wonted
success,)--that is, upon those which are corruptly and oppressively
administered; and this House do faithfully assure his Majesty, that we
will cor