WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1831-1832
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by privileges which they have forfeited? But if honorable gentle- men will respect themselves, and will not travel out of the limits of legitimate debate, for the purpose of gratifying private pique and personal hostility, they will find a wall of fire around them for their protection. The breast of every true-hearted American will glow with zeal in their defence, and will bow to their privil- eges with reverential gratitude. They will be surrounded with an impenetrable bulwark, such as no armed hosts, nor the massy walls of this capitol, could ever supply. It is a moral rampart-- a defence that will last while time endures. As· long as mem- bers respect the rights of individuals, individuals will respect their rights; nor will they ever lose this safeguard until they shall abandon that mutual respect which the citizens of a re- public owe to each other. Can gentlemen expect to enjoy parti- cular immunities, when they cease to act according to the high station they occupy, and degrade themselves by the use of lang- uage such as it does not become the proud spirit of freemen to suffer? Let them be assured the American people will never dishonor themselves by approving the volunta1·y degradation of their representatives. This honorable body claims to exercise a privilege which is undefined and incomprehensible, but gentlemen have not been able to lay their hand on any part of the constitution which au- thorizes their claim to such an extraordinary prerogative. Tbe attempt to support it rests upon analogy· only-an analogy con- nected with the powers of the star-chamber, that worst ex- crescence of a despotic monarchy. For centuries the citizens of England, to their lasting disgrace, cowered and were crushed beneath the political Juggernaut, the almighty and unquestion- able prerogative of the King-a prerogative which claimed that the King's court existed wherever the King's person was found; and its prerogative to punish for contempts was to be exercised at his pleasure, and was an engine of cruelty and oppression. They submitted to a privilege which was every thing when it was to be exercised, and nothing when it was to be defined and investigated-a privilege which floated as a vague fancy in the imagination of a British monarch, and was carried into ef- fect by his despotic arm; in the exercise of which the subjects of the British realm were, without law, distrained of their liber- ty, imprisoned, fined, pilloried, whipped, and pilloried again. Gentlemen have admitted that the power they claimed is not found in the constitution: then where is it? There is no king
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