s
did not think with him that he was still a member of the House of
Commons. That membership had been taken from him, formally, though
wrongfully, by his expulsion on the 5th of July, and he had
himself recognized the expulsion by accepting re-election from the
constituents of Westminster on the 16th of the same month. According
to precedent, however, that re-election could not be perfected until
the customary oaths had been taken; and, through a trick contrived
in the clerks' office, he was hindered from taking them before the
arrival of the marshal and his consequent arrest. Yet there can be no
doubt that, in the special circumstances of the case, this arrest was
especially indecorous, and, in the method of effecting it, altogether
illegal. If he had no right in the House of Commons, he was a common
trespasser, and ought to have been at once removed by the servants of
the House, who alone could have power to touch him within the walls.
To allow him a seat therein, without molestation, until the arrival
of the servants of the King's Bench Prison, and then to allow those
servants to enter the House and act upon an authority that could there
be no authority, was wholly unwarrantable, a gross insult to Lord
Cochrane, and, to the customs of the House of Commons, an insult yet
more gross. But to the hardship and the insult alike the House of
Commons, servile in its devotion to the Government of the day, was
blind.

A miserable farce ensued. While the House was sitting, a few hours
after Lord Cochrane's capture, a letter from the Marshal of the King's
Bench was read by the Speaker, in which his bold act was formally
reported and apologized for. "I humbly hope," he there said, "that I
have not committed any breach of privilege by the steps I have taken;
and that, if I have done wrong, it will be attributed to error in
judgment, and not to any intention of doing anything that might give
offence."

The short debate that followed the reading of that letter is very
noteworthy. Lord Castlereagh spoke first, and dictated the view to
be taken by all loyal members of the House. "From the nature of the
arrest and the circumstances attending it, I do not think, sir," he
said, "that the House is called upon to interfere. I am not aware, as
the House was not actually sitting, with the mace on the table and the
Speaker in the chair, when the arrest took place, that any breach of
privilege has been committed. It must be quite obvious to