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As there was no other candidate, it was resolved, at the same time, that the election of the sixteenth was a void election.

The freeholders still continued to think, that no other man was fit to represent them, and, on the sixteenth of March, elected him once more. Their resolution was now so well known, that no opponent ventured to appear.

The commons began to find, that power, without materials for operation, can produce no effect. They might make the election void for ever, but if no other candidate could be found, their determination could only be negative. They, however, made void the last election, and ordered a new writ.

On the 13th of April was a new election, at which Mr. Lutterel, and others, offered themselves candidates. Every method of intimidation was used, and some acts of violence were done, to hinder Mr. Lutterel from appearing. He was not deterred, and the poll was taken, which exhibited, for

Mr. Wilkes    1143

Mr. Lutterel   296
 

The sheriff returned Mr. Wilkes; but the house, on April the fifteenth, determined that Mr. Lutterel was lawfully elected.

From this day began the clamour, which has continued till now. Those who had undertaken to oppose the ministry, having no grievance of greater magnitude, endeavoured to swell this decision into bulk, and distort it into deformity, and then held it out to terrify the nation.

Every artifice of sedition has been since practised to awaken discontent and inflame indignation. The papers of every day have been filled with exhortations and menaces of faction. The madness has spread through all ranks, and through both sexes; women and children have clamoured for Mr. Wilkes; honest simplicity has been cheated into fury, and only the wise have escaped infection.

The greater part may justly be suspected of not believing their own position, and with them it is not necessary to dispute. They cannot be convinced who are convinced already, and it is well known that they will not be ashamed. The decision, however, by which the smaller number of votes was preferred to the greater, has perplexed the minds of some, whose opinions it were indecent to despise, and who, by their integrity, well deserve to have their doubts appeased.

Every diffuse and complicated question may be examined by different methods, upon different principles; and that truth, which is easily found by one investigator, may be missed by another, equally honest and equally diligent.

Those who inquire, whether a smaller number of legal votes can elect a representative in opposition to a greater, must receive, from every tongue, the same answer.

The question, therefore, must be, whether a smaller number of legal votes shall not prevail against a greater number of votes not legal.

It must be considered, that those votes only are legal which are legally given, and that those only are legally given, which are given for a legal candidate.

It remains, then, to be discussed, whether a man expelled can be so disqualified by a vote of the house, as that he shall be no longer eligible by lawful electors.

Here we must again recur, not to positive institutions, but to the unwritten law of social nature, to the great and pregnant principle of political necessity. All government supposes subjects; all authority implies obedience: to suppose in one the right to command what another has the right to refuse, is absurd and contradictory; a state, so constituted, must rest for ever in motionless equipoise, with equal attractions of contrary tendency, with equal weights of power balancing each other.

Laws which cannot be enforced can neither prevent nor rectify disorders. A sentence which cannot be executed can have no power to warn or to reform. If the commons have only the power of dismissing, for a few days, the man whom his constituents can immediately send back; if they can expel, but cannot exclude, they have nothing more than nominal authority, to which, perhaps, obedience never may be paid.