Page:Letters of Junius, volume 2 (Woodfall, 1772).djvu/188

178 same moment;—and that a court from which there is no appeal, assumes an original jurisdiction in a criminal case;—in short, Sir, to collect a thousand absurdities into one mass, "we have a law which cannot be known, because it is ex post facto, the party is both legislator and judge, and the jurisdiction is without appeal." Well might the judges say, The law of parliament is above us.

will not wonder, Sir, that with these qualifications, the declaratory resolutions of the house of commons should appear to be in perpetual contradiction, not only to common sense, and to the laws we are acquainted with, (and which alone we can obey,) but even to one another. I was led to trouble you with these observations by a passage, which, to speak in lutestring, I met with this morning in the course of my reading, and upon which I mean to put a question to the advocates for privilege.—On the 8th of March, 1704, (vide Journals, Vol. 14. p. 565,) the house thought proper to come to the following resolutions.—1. "That no commoner of England committed by the house of commons for breach of privilege