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NUMBER XXXVI.

The Introduction prefixed to the Second Edition of the said
Debates, which was published in the year 1716, under
the following title; "The Curse of Popery, and Popish

OCCASIONAL ESSAYS

ON

POLITICAL SUBJECTS.

ON THE EXCLUSION OF MR. JOHN WILKES FROM HIS SEAT IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, AS MEMBER FOR THE COUNTY OF MIDDLESEX, AFTER HIS EXPULSION AND RE-ELECTION.

To the Printer of the PUBLIC ADVERTISER.
March 16, 1771.

SIR,

I CANNOT help being strongly of opinion that an Act of Parliament to the following purport would tend greatly to allay the difcontents that have prevailed among the people ever fince the Middlefex election: and therefore I beg you would infert the following draft of fuch a bill in your paper. The advantages that, I conceive, would arise from it are as follows.

In the first place, it would fecure the rights of the Electors of Great Britain to chufe their own reprefentatives, from being controuled on any future occafion by the negative of a majority of the Houfe of Commons, exercifed under the form of an expulfion from that Houfe for fome vague and arbitrary crime, or defect, in the object of their displeasure, unknown to, and undefined by, the known laws of the land,

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and not proved with the strictness and folemnity that are deemed neceffary to the conviction and punishment of an offence of the flightest nature in our criminal courts of juftice. The apprehenfion of the poffibility of fuch proceedings in time to come, is what alarms the generality of impartial people rather than an opinion that this power was really fo abused in the cafe of Mr. Wilkes and the Middlefex election. To remove this apprehenfion is therefore an object of the laft importance.

In the next place, fuch an act of parliament would confirm all the proceedings of the House of Commons with respect to Mr. Wilkes on the rational and substantial ground of his being under a temporary incapacity of being elected a member of parliament, arising from the circumftance of his being then in prifon, in execution of a sentence of the court of King's Bench, and consequently unable to attend his duty in parliament; and, by fo confirming the proceedings of the Commons, it would entirely preferve their honour and dignity, and make it unneceffary that they should receed from any of their refolutions.

I am fenfible, however, that it may here be objected that one of their refolutions, namely, the important refolution of Mr. Wilkes's incapacity to be a member of parliament, made on the 17th day of February, 1769, and which is expreffed in the words following, to wit,

"Refolved,

"That John Wilkes, Esquire, having been in this feffion of parliament expelled this House, was and is incapable of being elected a member to serve in this present parliament," may at firft fight feem to be contradicted and overruled by the provifions of the annexed act of parlia ment: but, upon a clofer examination of it, it will be found to be capable of a construction that is confiftent with

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