members thereof, and then on the 16th day of the fame. month of February, had been again duly elected and returned a knight of the shire to serve in this prefent parliament for the faid county; to have been at the time of the re-election, and to be ftill at the time of paffing the said refolution, incapable of being elected a member to ferve in the faid parliament; from which refolution many perfons have concluded that the faid Commons Houfe of parliament meant to declare that his faid incapacity of being chosen a member of the faid Houfe of parliament arose merely from his faid expulfion from the fame, and not from the circumstance of his being at that time legally confined in prison in execution of a judgement of the court of King's Bench for having published two criminal writings, and his confequent inability to attend his duty, and ferve his constituents in parliament, though this had been mentioned as a principal ground for his expulfion :-and whereas it would be an unneceffary restraint upon the exercife of the right of election in the freeholders and other electors of Great Britain, and would greatly diminish the value of that important franchise, if they were to be precluded from freely choofing for their reprefentatives in parliament any persons that they shall think worthy of fo high a trust, and esteem beft qualified to ferve them, who are not rendered incapable thereof by fome known and general law, or fome pofitive act of parliament in that behalf made and provided: IT IS therefore enacted by the King's most excellent Majefty, by and with the advice and confent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and the Commons in this prefent parliament assembled, that no expulfion of any member of the Commons House of parliament by the faid Houfe, whether already paffed, or hereafter to be made or done, shall be conftrued, or taken to have created, or to create, any inca

pacity

pacity in the perfon fo expelled to be again chofen into the faid Commons Houfe of parliament, either for the fame place for which he had been chofen before, or for any other but the perfon fo expelled fhall remain capable of being re-elected to fit in the fame parliament; and, if he shall be fo re-elected either for the fame or any other place, and he be otherwise duly qualified to be chosen according to the known laws of the land, he fhall fit and vote in the faid Commons House of parliament in the fame manner as if fuch expulfion had never happened, or he had then been chofen a member thereof for the first time.*

Though no Act of Parliament of the kind here recommended has ever been passed, yet the Resolution of the House of Commons, formed on the 17th of February, 1769, for excluding Mr. Wilkes from his seat in the House after his expulsion from it, on the preceeding 3d day of February, and his Re-election on the 16th by the freeholders of the county of Middlesex, to wit, "That John "Wilkes, Esquire, having been, in this session of Parliament, ex"pelled this House, was and is incapable of being elected a memher "to serve in this present Parliament," was afterwards rescinded by a subsequent House of Commons, in the spring of the year 1782, when Lord North retired from his offices of First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, and was succeeded in the former of those offices by the Marquis of Rockingham, and the Earl of Shelburne was made Secretary of State. It seems reasonable, therefore, to conclude, "That, as the law now stands, an expulsion of a "Member of the House of Commons by the House, does not render "the person expelled incapable of being elected again to serve in the "same parliament."

F. M.

A PRO

A PROPOSAL FOR A RECONCILIATION WITH THE REVOLTED PROVINCES OF NORTH AMERICA, WITHOUT EXEMPTING THEM FROM THE AUTHORITY OF THE BRITISH PARLIAMENT.

IN THE YEAR 1775.

IN the first place, to repeal the Quebeck-Act, and thereby re-establish the King's proclamation of October, 1763, with refpect to the province of Quebeck, and reduce the extent of the faid province to what it was before the late Quebeck-A&t; or, perhaps, (if it fhall be thought neceffary, upon a full inquiry into the matter by the teftimony of Sea-officers acquainted with Newfoundland, and the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, and the fisheries carried-on in thofe parts, and by the teftimony of merchants acquainted with the fame fubjects,) to enlarge the former extent of the province of Quebeck, as fettled by the proclamation of October, 1763, by the addition of the coaft of Labrador, which, by the faid proclamation, was made part of the government of Newfoundland; but, by no means, to put all the interiour part of North-America into the province of Quebeck.

SECONDLY.-After thus repealing the Quebeck-A&t, and reviving the King's proclamation of October, 1763, and reducing the province of Quebeck to a reasonable and moderate extent, capable of being governed by an Affembly, in purfuance of the promise in the faid Royal proclamation, To afcertain the laws of the province. This should be done by expressly mentioning and confirming the Petition of Right, the Habeas Corpus Act, the Bill, or Declaration

of

of Rights, made in the first year of the reign of King William and Queen Mary, and perhaps a few other ftatutes that are fingularly beneficial and favourable to the liberty of the subject, and then by confirming, in general terms, the rest of the laws of England, both criminal and civil, excepting the penal laws against the exercise of the Popish religion, which fhould be declared to be (what they have always been understood to be,) utterly null and void with respect to that province; and excepting, alfo, the laws relating to the tenures of land, the manner of conveying it, and the laws of dower and inheritance, at leaft with refpect to the children of marriages already contracted, or which fhall be contracted before a given future day, and declaring, that upon thefe fubjects the former French laws of the province should

be in force.

But the laws of England, which disqualify Papists from holding places of truft and profit, ought ftill to be continued in the province, though the penal laws fhould be abolished; the former laws being not laws of perfecution, but of felf-defence. Yet the King might, if he pleased, extend his bounty to those people who figned the French petition, and to fuch other perfons of the Roman-Catholick religion, as he thought fit, by granting them penfions.

Alfo, it would be proper to abolish the seigneurial Jurisdictions in Canada, for the fatisfaction of the great body of the freeholders of the province. If this cannot be done confiftently with juftice, and the terms of the capitulation granted by Sir Jeffery Amherst, in September, 1760,without giving the feigniors a pecuniary compenfation for the lofs of thefe jurifdictions, (though I incline to think it might,) fuch pecuniary compenfations ought to be given them. The expence of a week's extraordinaries to the army at Boston would be more than fufficient to make thefe compenfations in a large and ample manner.

THIRDLY.

THIRDLY.-Having thus afcertained the laws of the province of Quebeck, it would be proper to provide for the convenient administration of justice in it, either by adopting the plan fet-forth above, in pages 343, 359, or fome other that shall be thought fitter for the purpose.

FOURTHLY. To provide a competent legiflature for the province of Quebeck. The best legislature that could be provided for it would, as I believe, be a Proteftant Affembly chofen by the freeholders of the country, whether Proteftants or Roman-Catholicks. The next beft, I should be inclined to think, would be a Legislative Council, confifting of Proteftants only, (fuch as is proposed in the draught of an Act of Parliament, contained in the Account of the Proceedings of the British and other Proteftant inhabitants of the province of Quebeck in North-America in order to obtain a boufe of Affembly in that province, lately published and fold by B. White in Fleet-Street,) to be established for only feven years; in which all the members fhould be made. independent of the Governor, fo as to be neither re moveable nor fufpendible by him upon any occafion whatfoever, though they might be removed by the King, by his order in his Privy Council. They fhould be thirty-one in number, or perhaps more; and fhould all fign the ordinances for which they gave their votes, and fhould be paid forty fhillings each, every time they attended the meetings of the Council, in order to induce them to attend in confiderable numbers; as the Juftices of the Peace in England are intitled to a pecuniary allowance for attending the Quarter-Seffions of the Peace, and the Directors of the East-India Company, for attending the meetings upon the affairs of the Company, and the members of the Houfe of Commons are intitled to wages from their conftituents. attending Parliament, though now they forbear demanding them. But they fhould receive no general falaries from the Crown, not depending upon their attendances; as fuch a

practice