No Stuart ever did anything more arbitrary and illegal.

The House deliberately intended to constitute itself, as Burke had said two years before, an arbitrary and despotic assembly.

"The distempers of monarchy were the great subjects of apprehension and redress in the last century.

In this, the distempers of Parliament." Burke, in a speech which he delivered in his place in 1771, warned the House of the evils of the course upon which they were entering, and declared those to be their mortal enemies who would persuade them to act as if they were a self-originated magistracy, independent of the people, and unconnected with their opinions and feelings.

But these mortal enemies of its very constitution were at this time the majority of the House.