iddlesex are deprived of a Briton'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 excepted from their choice:

"Non de vi, neque caede, nec veneno,
Sed lis est mihi de tribus capellis."

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 gaol, as being legally convicted of sedition
and impiety.

That this man cannot be appointed one of the guardians and 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 gaol.

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 stand, 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. That a man was in gaol
for sedition and impiety, would, I believe, have been, within memory, a
sufficient reason why he should not come out of gaol a legislator. This
reason, notwithstanding 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 exercise