It has been always deemed a most important and essential privilege of the houses of parliament, that they may punish in this summary manner by commitment all those who disobey their orders to attend as witnesses, or for any purposes of their constitutional duties. No inquiry could go forward before the house at large or its committees, without this power to enforce obedience; especially when the information is to be extracted from public officers against the secret wishes of the court. It is equally necessary (or rather more so, since evidence not being on oath in the lower house, there can be no punishment in the course of law) that the contumacy or prevarication of witnesses should incur a similar penalty. No man would seek to take away this authority from parliament, unless he is either very ignorant of what has occurred in other times and his own, or is a slave in the fetters of some general theory. But far less can be advanced for several exertions of power on record in the journals, which under the name of privilege must be reckoned by impartial men irregularities and encroachments, capable only at some periods of a kind of apology from the unsettled state of the constitution. The Commons began, in the famous or infamous case of Floyd, to arrogate a power of animadverting upon political offences, which was then wrested from them by the upper house. But in the first parliament of Charles I. they committed Montagu (afterwards the noted semi-popish bishop) to the serjeant, on account of a published book, containing doctrines they did not approve.[390] For this was evidently the main point, though he was also charged with reviling two persons who had petitioned the house, which bore a distant resemblance to a contempt. In the long parliament, even from its commencement, every boundary was swept away; it was sufficient to have displeased the majority by act or word; but no precedents can be derived from a crisis of force struggling against force. If we descend to the reign of William III., it will be easy to discover instances of commitments, laudable in their purpose, but of such doubtful legality and dangerous consequence that no regard to the motive should induce us to justify the precedent. Graham and Burton, the solicitors of the treasury in all the worst state prosecutions under Charles and James, and Jenner, a baron of the exchequer, were committed to the Tower by the council immediately after the king's proclamation, with an intention of proceeding criminally against them. Some months afterwards, the suspension of the habeas corpus, which had taken place by bill, having ceased, they moved the king's bench to admit them to bail; but the House of Commons took this up, and, after a report of a committee as to precedents, put them in custody of the serjeant at arms.[391] On complaints of abuses in victualling the navy, the commissioners of that department were sent for in the serjeant's custody, and only