All miſchiefs and grievances, operations and remedies, that tranſcend the ordinary courſe of the laws, are within the reach of this extraordinary tribunal. It can regulate or new model the ſucceſſion to the crown; as was done in the reign of Henry VIII and William III. It can alter the eſtabliſhed religion of the land; as was done in a variety of inſtances, in the reigns of king Henry VIII and his three children. It can change and create afreſh even the conſtitution of the kingdom and of parliaments themſelves; as was done by the act of union, and the ſeveral ſtatutes for triennial and ſeptennial elections. It can, in ſhort, do every thing that is not naturally impoſſible; and therefore ſome have not ſcrupled to call it’s power, by a figure rather too bold, the omnipotence of parliament. True it is, that what the parliament doth, no authority upon earth can undo. So that it is a matter moſt eſſential to the liberties of this kingdom, that ſuch members be delegated to this important truſt, as are moſt eminent for their probity, their fortitude, and their knowlege; for it was a known apothegm of the great lord treaſurer Burleigh, “that England could never be ruined but by a parliament:” and, as ſir Matthew Hale obſerves[1], this being the higheſt and greateſt court, over which none other can have juriſdiction in the kingdom, if by any means a miſgovernment ſhould any way fall upon it, the ſubjects of this kingdom are left without all manner of remedy. To the ſame purpoſe the preſident Monteſquieu, though I truſt too haſtily, preſages[2]; that as Rome, Sparta, and Carthage have loſt their liberty and periſhed, ſo the conſtitution of England will in time loſe it’s liberty, will periſh: it will periſh, whenever the legiſlative power ſhall become more corrupt than the executive.
It muſt be owned that Mr Locke[3], and other theoretical writers, have held, that “there remains ſtill inherent in the people a ſupreme power to remove or alter the legiſlative, when they find the legiſlative act contrary to the truſt repoſed in them:
