Are we to submit patiently to so degrading a sentence, a sentence too passed by men who have not so conducted themselves as to have acquired any right to censure others?
Have they ever made any sacrifice of their own interest, of their own dignity, to the general welfare?
Have not excellent bills been lost because we would not consent to insert in them clauses conferring new privileges on the nobility?
And now that their Lordships are bent on obtaining popularity, do they propose to purchase it by relinquishing even the smallest of their own oppressive privileges?
No; they offer to their country that which will cost them nothing, but which will cost us and will cost the Crown dear.

In such circumstances it is our duty to repel the insult which has been offered to us, and, by doing so, to vindicate the lawful prerogative of the King.
Such topics as these were doubtless well qualified to inflame the passions of the House of Commons.

The near prospect of a dissolution could not be very agreeable to a member whose election was likely to be contested.

He must go through all the miseries of a canvass, must shake hands with crowds of freeholders or freemen, must ask after their wives and children, must hire conveyances for outvoters, must open alehouses, must provide mountains of beef, must set rivers of ale running, and might perhaps, after all the drudgery and all the expense, after being lampooned, hustled, pelted, find himself at the bottom of the poll, see his antagonists chaired, and sink half ruined into obscurity.

All this evil he was now invited to bring on himself, and invited by men whose own seats in the legislature were permanent, who gave up neither dignity nor quiet, neither power nor money, but gained the praise of patriotism by forcing him to abdicate a high station, to undergo harassing labour and anxiety, to mortgage his cornfields and to hew down his woods.