Somers, with a force and eloquence which surprised even an audience accustomed to hear him with pleasure, exposed the absurdity of the doctrine held by the high Tories.

"If the Convention,"-- it was thus that he argued,--"was not a Parliament, how can we be a Parliament?
An Act of Elizabeth provides that no person shall sit or vote in this House till he has taken the old oath of supremacy.

Not one of us has taken that oath.

Instead of it, we have all taken the new oath of supremacy which the late Parliament substituted for the old oath.

It is therefore a contradiction to say that the Acts of the late Parliament are not now valid, and yet to ask us to enact that they shall henceforth be valid.
For either they already are so, or we never can make them so." This reasoning, which was in truth as unanswerable as that of Euclid, brought the debate to a speedy close.