It is very true that we were and are extremely dissatisfied with those opinions, and the consequent determinations of the Lords; and we do not think such a mode of proceeding at all justified by the most numerous and the best precedents.
Burke expresses dissatisfaction with the opinions of the Lords and questions the justification of their proceedings.
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The House of Lords, for instance, is not morally competent to dissolve the House of Commons,--no, nor even to dissolve itself, nor to abdicate, if it would, its portion in the legislature of the kingdom.
Who could flatter himself that these men, suddenly, and as it were by enchantment, snatched from the humblest rank of subordination, would not be intoxicated with their unprepared greatness?
Who could conceive that men who are habitually meddling, daring, subtle, active, of litigious dispositions and unquiet minds, would easily fall back into their old condition of obscure contention, and laborious, low, and unprofitable…
When such an unwarrantable maxim is once established, that no throne is lawful but the elective, no one act of the princes who preceded this era of fictitious election can be valid.
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