itself creates in him such an incapacity to be re-elected, that, at a subsequent election, any votes given to him are null and void; and that any other candidate, who, except the person expelled, has the greatest number of votes, ought to be the sitting member.'
Waving, for the present, any objection I may have to this state of the question, I shall venture to meet our champion upon his own ground; and attempt to support the affirmative of it, in one of the two ways, by which he says it can be alone fairly supported. 'If there be no statute, says he, in which the specific disability is clearly created, &c. (and we acknowledge there is none) the custom of Parliament must then be referred to; and some case or cases, strictly in point, must be produced, with the decision of the court upon them.' Now, I assert, that this has been done. Mr. Walpole's case is strictly in point, to prove that expulsion creates absolute incapacity of being re-elected. This was the clear decision of the House upon it; and was a full declaration, that incapacity was the necessary consequence of expulsion. The law was as clearly and firmly fixed by this resolution, and is as binding in every subsequent
