rst elevations of his heart, began his new authority by imprisoning
his colleague.

To charge this gentleman with the dismission of any of his colleagues,
can, after the strongest aggravations, rise no higher than to an
accusation of having advised his majesty to dismiss him, and even that,
my lords, stands, at present, unsupported by evidence; nor could it,
however uncontestably proved, discover either wickedness or weakness, or
show any other authority than every man would exercise, if he were able
to attain it.

If he had discharged this gentleman by his own authority, if he had
transacted singly any great affair to the disadvantage of the publick,
if he had imposed either upon the king or the senate by false
representations, if he had set the laws at defiance, and openly trampled
on our constitution, and if by these practices he had exalted himself
above the reach of a legal prosecution, it had been worthy of the
dignity of this house, to have overleaped the common boundaries of
custom, to have neglected the standing rules of procedure, and to have
brought so contemptuous and powerful an offender to a level with the
rest of his fellow-subjects by expeditious and vigorous methods, to have
repressed his arrogance, broken his power, and overwhelmed him at once
by the resistless weight of an unanimous censure.

But, my lords, we have in the present case no provocations from crimes
either openly avowed, or evidently proved; and certainly no incitement
from necessity to exert the power of the house in any extraordinary
method of prosecution. We may punish whenever we can convict, and
convict whenever we can obtain evidence; let us not, therefore, condemn
any man unheard, nor punish any man uncondemned.

The duke of BEDFORD spoke next, in substance as follows:--My lords, it
is easy to charge the most blameless and gentle procedure with injustice
and severity, but it is not easy to support such an accusation without
confounding measures widely different, and disguising the nature of
things with fallacious misrepresentations.

Nothing is more evident than that neither condemnation nor punishment is
intended by the motion before us, which is only to remove from power a
man who has no other claim to it than the will of his master, and who,
as he had not been injured by never obtaining it, cannot justly complain
that it is taken from him.

The motion, my lords, is so far from inflicting punishment, that it
confers reward