PARLIAMENT, the High Court of, is the supreme court of the kingdom, not only for the making, but also for the execu tion of laws, by the trial of great and enor mous offenders, whether lords or com moners, in the method of parliamentary impeachment. An impeachment before the Lords, by the Commons of Great Bri tain in Parliament, is a prosecution of the already known and established law, and has been frequently put in practice ; be ing a presentment to the most high and supreme court of criminal jurisdiction, by the most solemn grand inquest of the whole kingdom. A commoner cannot, however, be impeached before the Lords for any capital offence, but only for high misdemeanors ; a peer may be impeached for any crime. And they usually, in case of an impeachment of a peer for treason, address the crown to appoint a lord high steward, for the greater dignity and regu larity of their proceedings ; which high steward was formerly elected by the peers themselves, though lie was gene rally commissioned by the king ; but it has of late years been strenuously main tained, that the appointment of a high steward in such cases is not indispensa bly necessary ; but the house may pro ceed without one. The articles of im peachment are a kind of bills of indict ment, found by the House of Com mons, and afterwards tried by the Lords ; who are in cases of misdemeanors considered not only as their own peers, but as the peers of the whole nation.
Much has been said and written upon the question of parliamentary reform, and the actual state of the Parliament. The result of a candid inquiry will be this ; namely, that the Parliament, which has been, and now is the guardian of the liberties of the people, may hereafter by corruption become the means of their destruction, or the cause of their being surrendered, and the Parliament itself have only a nominal existence. To pre
vent this, the people can only depend upon the frequent necessity of their re presentatives appealing to them for a re newal of their powers ; that is, upon the frequency of elections, which, in order also to be free, should be made by as large a body of voters as possible, and that what are called rotten boroughs should at once be abolished. To object to this, that it is an of char tered rights, is an insult to common sense ; for all charters are void that are against common right, and the only ob ject of elections is for the benefit of the many, not for the private advantage of the few. That the present state of the representation of the people is not such as it ought to be has been too generally admitted to be insisted upon here ; but let it never be forgotten, that amongst those who have considered it as defec tive we must number Mr. Pitt, Mr. Fox, and the commentator Blackstone. In any future revision of the laws against bribery and corruption, it would be well to make the elected as well as the electors take the oath against bribery ; and still fur ther to narrow, though not wholly to ex clude, the admission of placemen and contractors to seats in the House of Com mons. If the freedom of the press can be fully preserved, or obtained, we may venture to hope that every thing will ultimately be effected which the rational friends of freedom can desire ; but a knowledge of our history will teach us, that little is to he gained for liberty by ad herence to any precedents drawn from proceedings before the Revolution, the true principles of which are the only ge nuine grounds on which to rest the foun dation of British liberty.