felt no interest in the impeachment of Lord
Oxford. The friends of the ruined minister had recourse to an
ingenious artifice. June 24, 1717, had been appointed for the opening
of the proceedings. Westminster Hall, lately the scene of the
impeachment of Somers, and soon to be the scene of the impeachment of
Warren Hastings, was of course the place where Oxford had to come
forward and meet his accusers. The King, the Prince and the Princess
of Wales were seated in the {169} Hall; most of the foreign ambassadors
and ministers were spectators. The imposing formalities and artificial
terrors of such a ceremonial were kept up. Lord Oxford had been
brought from the Tower to Westminster by water. He was now led
bareheaded up to the bar by the Deputy Lieutenant of the Tower, having
the axe borne before him, its edge turned away from him as yet,
symbolic of the doom that might await the prisoner, but to which he had
not yet been declared responsible. When the reading of the articles of
impeachment and other opening passages of the trial had been gone
through, Lord Harcourt, Oxford's friend, interposed, and announced that
he had a motion to make. In order to hear his motion, the Peers had to
withdraw to their own House. There Lord Harcourt moved that the House
should dispose of the two articles of impeachment for high-treason
before going into any of the evidence to support the charges for high
crimes and misdemeanors. The argument for this course of proceeding
was plausible. If Oxford were convicted of high-treason he would have
to forfeit his life; and in such case, where would be the use of
convicting him of a minor offence? The plan on which the Commons
proposed to act, that of taking all the evidence in order of time, no
matter to which charge it had reference, before coming to any
conclusion, might, as Lord Harcourt put it, "draw the trial into
prodigious length," and absolutely to no purpose. Should the accused
be found guilty of high-treason he must suffer death, and there would
be an end of the whole business. Should he be acquitted of the graver
charge, he might then be impeached on the lighter accusation; and what
harm would have been done or time lost? The motion was carried by a
majority of eighty-eight to fifty-six.

Now it is hardly possible to suppose that the Peers who voted in the
majority did not know very well that the Commons would not, and could
not, submit to have their mode of conducting an