Page:Letters of Junius, volume 2 (Woodfall, 1772).djvu/191

Rh of commons, beyond what appears upon the face of those two resolutions, the legality of which you now deny? If you say that parliaments are not infallible and that Queen Anne, in consequence of the violent proceedings of that house of commons, was obliged to prorogue and dissolve them, I shall agree with you very heartily, and think that the precedent ought to be followed immediately. But you, Mr. Ellis, who hold this language, are inconsistent with your own principles. You have hitherto maintained, that the house of commons are the sole judges of their own privileges, and that their declaration does ipso facto constitute the law of parliament; yet now you confess that parliaments are fallible, and that their resolutions may be illegal; consequently that their resolutions do not constitute the law of parliament. When the King was advised to dissolve the present parliament, you advised him to tell his subjects that he was careful not to assume any of those powers which the constitution had placed in other hands, &c. Yet Queen Anne, it seems, was justified in exerting her prerogative to stop a house of commons, whose proceedings, compared with those of the assembly of which you are a