Secrecy and mystery may serve, or be supposed to serve, the interests of arbitrary rulers; perfect openness is the only principle on which a free constitution can be maintained and a free people governed.
It seems convenient to take all the measures which, in this first portion of the reign before us, affected the proceedings or constitution of Parliament together; and, indeed, one enactment of great importance, which was passed in 1770, it is hardly unreasonable to connect in some degree with the decision of the House which adjudged the seat for Middlesex to Colonel Luttrell.

Ever since the year 1704 it had been regarded as a settled point that the House of Commons had the exclusive right of determining every question concerning the election of its members.

But it was equally notorious that it had exercised that right in a manner which violated every principle of justice and even of decency.

Election petitions were decided by the entire House, and were almost invariably treated as party questions, in which impartiality was not even professed.

Thirty years before, the Prime-minister himself (Sir Robert Walpole) had given notice to his supporters that "no quarter was to be given in election petitions;" and it was a division on one petition which eventually drove him from office.