Excerpt from Speeches I fear lest the strength of this House, judicially exercised as I understand it to be - with infrequency of judicial exercise that the strength of this House makes it forget our relative positions. At present I am pleading at its bar for justice. By right it is there [pointing to the seats] I should plead. It is that right I claim in the name of those who sent me here. No legal disqualification before my election, or it might have been made the ground of petition; no legal disqualification since my election - not even pretended. It is said: You might have taken the oath as other members did. I could not help, when I read that, Sir, trying -to put myself in the place of each member who said it. I imagined a member of some form of faith who found in the oath words which seemed to him to clash with his faith, but still words which he thought he might utter, but which he would prefer not to utter if there were any other form which the law provided him; and I asked myself whether each of those members would not then have taken the form which was most consonant with his honor and his conscience. If I have not misread, some hon. Members seem to think that I have neither honor nor conscience. Is there not some proof to the contrary in the fact that I did not go through the form, believing that there was another right open to me? Hear, hear, ' and 'order Is that not some proof that I have honor and conscience? About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.