Page:Letters of Junius, volume 2 (Woodfall, 1772).djvu/107

duty which the constitution expected from them, in return for the dignity and independence of their station, in return for the hereditary share it has given them in the legislature, the majority of them made common cause with the other house in oppressing the people, and established another doctrine as false in itself, and if possible more pernicious to the constitution, than that on which the Middlesex election was determined. By resolving, "that they had no right to impeach a judgment of the house of commons, in any case whatsoever, where that house has a competent jurisdiction," they in effect gave up that constitutional check and reciprocal controul of one branch of the legislature over the other, which is perhaps the greatest and most important object provided for by the division of the whole legislative power into three estates; and now, let the judicial decisions of the house of commons be ever so extravagant, let their declarations of the law be ever so flagrantly false, arbitrary, and oppressive to the subject, the house of lords have imposed a slavish silence upon themselves;—they cannot interpose;—they cannot protect the subject;—they cannot defend the laws of their country. A