The Impeachment of the House of Brunswick. Bradlaugh Charles
that this particular statute has never been considered immutable or irrepealable. It is right to add that the clauses repealed were only of consequence to the nation, and that their repeal was no injury to the Crown. The unbounded right of the supreme Legislature to enlarge its own powers was contended for and admitted in 1716, when the duration of Parliament was extended four years, a triennial Parliament declaring itself and all future Parliaments septennial. Furthermore, it has been held to be sedition to deny the complete authority of the Irish Parliament to put an end to its own existence.
It has been admitted to be within the jurisdiction of Parliament to give electoral privileges to citizens theretofore unenfranchised; Parliament claims the unquestioned right to disfranchise persons, hitherto electors, for misconduct in the exercise of electoral rights, and in its pleasure to remove and annul any electoral disability. The right of Parliament to decrease or increase the number of representatives for any borough has never been disputed, and its authority to decrease the number of Peers sitting and voting in the House of Lords was recognized in passing the Irish Church Disestablishment Bill, by which several Bishops were summarily ejected from amongst the Peers. It is now submitted that Parliament possesses no Legislative right but what it derives from the people, and that the people are under no irrevocable contract or obligation to continue any member of the House of Brunswick on the throne. In order to show that this is not a solitary opinion, the following Parlimentary dicta are given:—
The Honorable Temple Luttrell, in a speech made in the House of Commons, on the 7th November, 1775, showed "that of thirty-three sovereigns since William the Conqueror, thirteen only have ascended the throne by divine hereditary right. … The will of the people, superseding any hereditary claim to succession, at the commencement of the twelfth century placed Henry I. on the throne, "and this subject to conditions as to laws to be made by Henry. King John was compelled solemnly to register an assurance of the ancient rights of the people in a formal manner;" and this necessary work was accomplished by the Congress at Runnymede, in the year 1115. "Sir, in the reign of Henry III. (about the year 1223), the barons, clergy and freeholders, understanding that the King, as Earl of Poictou, had landed some of his continental troops in the western ports of England, with a design to strengthen a most odious and arbitrary set of ministers, they assembled in a Convention or Congress, from whence they despatched deputies to King Henry, declaring that if he did not immediately send back those Poictouvians, and remove from his person and councils evil advisers, they would place upon the throne a Prince who should better observe the laws of the land. Sir, the King not only hearkened to that Congress, but shortly after complied with every article of their demand, and publicly notified his reformation. Now, Sir, what are we to call that assembly which dethroned Edward II. when the Archbishop of Canterbury preached a sermon on this Text, 'The voice of the people is the voice of God'?" "A Prince of the house of Lancaster was invited over from banishment, and elected by the people to the throne" on the fall of Richard II. "I shall next proceed to the general Convention and Congress, which, in 1461, enthroned the Earl of March by the name of Edward IV., the Primate of all England collecting the suffrages of the people." "In 1659, a Convention or Congress restored legal Monarchy in the person of Charles II."
William Pitt, on the 16th December, 1788, being then Chancellor of the Exchequer, contended that "the right of providing for the deficiency of Royal authority rested with the two remaining branches of the Legislature;" and again, "on the disability of the Sovereign, where was the right to be found? It was to be found in the voice, in the sense of the people; with them it rested." On the 22d December, Mr. Pitt said that Mr. Fox had contended that "the two Houses of Parliament cannot proceed to legislate without a King." His (Mr. Pitt's) answer was: "The conduct of the Revolution had contradicted that assertion; they had acted legislatively, and, no King being present, they must, consequently, have acted without a King."
Mr. Hardinge, a barrister of great repute, and afterwards Solicitor-General and Judge, in the same debate, said: "The virtues of our ancestors and the genius of the Government accurately understood, a century ago, had prompted the Lords and Commons of the realm to pass a law without a King; and a law which, as he had always read it, had put upon living record this principle: 'That whenever the supreme executive hand shall have lost its power to act, the people of the land, fully and freely represented, can alone repair the defect.'"
On the 26th December, in the House of Lords, discussing the power to exclude a sitting Monarch from the throne, the Earl of Abingdon said: "Will a King exclude himself? No! no! my Lords, that exclusion appertains to us and to the other House of Parliament exclusively. It is to us it belongs; it is our duty. It is the business of the Lords and Commons of Great Britain, and of us alone, as the trustees and representatives of the nation." And following up this argument, Lord Abingdon contended that in the contingency he was alluding to, "the right to new model or alter the succession vests in the Parliament of England without the King, in the Lords and Commons of Great Britain solely and exclusively."
Lord Stormont, in the same debate, pointed out that William III. "possessed no other right to the throne than that which he derived from the votes of the two Houses."
The Marquis of Lansdowne said: "One of the best constitutional writers we had was Mr. Justice Foster, who, in his book on the 'Principles of the Constitution,' denies the right even of hereditary succession, and says it is no right whatever, but merely a political expedient. … The Crown, Mr. Justice Foster said, was not merely a descendable property like a laystall, or a pigstye, but was put in trust for millions, and for the happiness of ages yet unborn, which Parliament has it always in its power to mould, to shape, to alter, to fashion, just as it shall think proper. And in speaking of Parliament," his Lordship said, "Mr. Justice Foster repeatedly spoke of the two Houses of Parliament only."
My object being to procure the repeal of the only title under which any member of the House of Brunswick could claim to succeed the present sovereign on the throne, or else to procure a special enactment which shall for the future exclude the Brunswicks, as the Stuarts were excluded in 1688 and 1701, the following grounds are submitted as justifying and requiring such repeal or new enactment:—
1st. That during the one hundred and fifty-seven years the Brunswick family have reigned over the British Empire, the policy and conduct of the majority of the members of that family, and especially of the various reigning members, always saving and excepting her present Majesty, have been hostile to the welfare of the mass of the people. This will be sought to be proved at length by a sketch of the principal events in the reign of each monarch, from August 1st, 1714, to the present date.
2d. That during the same period of one hundred and fifty-seven years, fifteen-sixteenths of the entire National Debt have been created, and that this debt is in great part the result of wars arising from the mischievous and pro-Hanoverian policy of the Brunswick family.
3d. That in consequence of the incompetence or want of desire for governmental duty on the part of the various reigning members of the House of Brunswick, the governing power of the country has been practically limited to a few families, who have used government in the majority of instances as a system of machinery for securing place and pension for themselves and their associates; while it is submitted that government should be the best contrivance of national wisdom for the alleviation of national suffering and promotion of national happiness. Earl Grey even admits that "Our national annals, since the Revolution of 1688, present a sad picture of the selfishness, baseness and corruption of the great majority of the actors on the political stage."
4th. That a huge pension list has been created, the recipients of the largest pensions being in most cases persons who are already members of wealthy families, and who have done nothing whatever to justify their being kept in idleness at the national expense, while so many workers in the agricultural districts are in a state of semi-starvation; so many toilers in large works in Wales, Scotland, and some parts of England, are in constant debt and dependence; and while large numbers of the Irish peasantry—having for many generations been denied life at home—have until lately been driven to seek those means of existence across the sea which their own fertile land should have amply provided for them.
5th. That the monarchs of the Brunswick family have been, except in a few cases of vicious interference, costly puppets, useful only to the governing aristocracy as a cloak to shield the real wrong doers from the