1. It has been the constant practice of the House of Commons to repress disorderly or indecent behaviour by a censure delivered through the speaker. Instances of this are even noticed in the journals under Edward VI. and Mary; and it is in fact essential to the regular proceedings of any assembly. In the former reign they also committed one of their members to the Tower. But in the famous case of Arthur Hall in 1581, they established the first precedent of punishing one of their own body for a printed libel derogatory to them as a part of the legislature; and they inflicted the threefold penalty of imprisonment, fine, and expulsion.[377] From this time forth it was understood to be the law and usage of parliament, that the Commons might commit to prison any one of their members for misconduct in the house, or relating to it. The right of imposing a fine was very rarely asserted after the instance of Hall. But that of expulsion, no earlier precedent whereof has been recorded, became as indubitable as frequent and unquestioned usage could render it. It was carried to a great excess by the long parliament, and again in the year 1680. These, however, were times of extreme violence; and the prevailing faction had an apology in the designs of the court, which required an energy beyond the law to counteract them. The offences, too, which the whigs thus punished in 1680, were in their effect against the power and even existence of parliament. The privilege was far more unwarrantably exerted by the opposite party in 1714, against Sir Richard Steele, expelled the house for writing the "Crisis," a pamphlet reflecting on the ministry. This was, perhaps, the first instance wherein the House of Commons so identified itself with the executive administration, independently of the sovereign's person, as to consider itself libelled by those who impugned its measures.[378] In a few instances an attempt was made to carry this farther, by declaring the party incapable of sitting in parliament. It is hardly necessary to remark that upon this rested the celebrated question of the Middlesex election in 1769. If a few precedents, and those not before the year 1680, were to determine all controversies of constitutional law, it is plain enough from the journals that the house have assumed the power of incapacitation. But as such an authority is highly dangerous and unnecessary for any good purpose, and as, according to all legal rules, so extraordinary a power could not be supported except by a sort of prescription which cannot be shown, the final resolution of the House of Commons, which condemned the votes passed in times of great excitement, appears far more consonant to just principles.