d sometimes in imprisonment, and often
in expulsion.

That such power should reside in the house of commons, in some cases, is
inevitably necessary; since it is required, by every polity, that where
there is a possibility of offence, there should be a possibility of
punishment. A member of the house cannot be cited for his conduct in
parliament before any other court; and, therefore, if the house cannot
punish him, he may attack, with impunity, the rights of the people, and
the title of the king.

This exemption from the authority of other courts was, I think, first
established in favour of the five members in the long parliament. It is
not to be considered as an usurpation, for it is implied in the
principles of government. If legislative powers are not coordinate, they
cease, in part, to be legislative; and if they be coordinate, they are
unaccountable; for to whom must that power account, which has no
superiour?

The house of commons is, indeed, dissoluble by the king, as the nation
has, of late, been very clamorously told; but while it subsists it is
coordinate with the other powers, and this coordination ceases only,
when the house, by dissolution, ceases to subsist.

As the particular representatives of the people are, in their publick
character, above the control of the courts of law, they must be subject
to the jurisdiction of the house; and as the house, in the exercise of
its authority, can be neither directed nor restrained, its own
resolutions must be its laws, at least, if there is no antecedent
decision of the whole legislature.

This privilege, not confirmed by any written law or positive compact,
but by the resistless power of political necessity, they have exercised,
probably, from their first institution, but certainly, as their records
inform us, from the 23rd of Elizabeth, when they expelled a member for
derogating from their privileges.

It may, perhaps, be doubted, whether it was originally necessary, that
this right of control and punishment should extend beyond offences in
the exercise of parliamentary duty, since all other crimes are
cognizable by other courts. But they who are the only judges of their
own rights, have exerted the power of expulsion on other occasions, and
when wickedness arrived at a certain magnitude, have considered an
offence against society, as an offence against the house.

They have, therefore, divested notorious delinquents of their
legislative character, and de