idual. I
say--

Mr. Justice BEST.--I say you have no knowledge of anything which is said
in the Houses of Parliament.

Mr. COOPER.--With great submission I re-urge it as a matter of history,
and as such I would use it whether the fact is ten years old or ten
thousand, I submit makes no difference.

Mr. Justice BEST.--Mr. Cooper, I have told you my opinion; if you don't
choose to submit to it, the best way will be to go on, perhaps.

Mr. COOPER.--With the utmost deference to your Lordship--

Mr. Justice BEST.--The Court of King's Bench has decided this very point,
within the last two terms, against what you are contending for. If your
own opinion be the better one, proceed.

Mr. COOPER.--Gentlemen, I was going to say, when the Speaker of the House
of Commons exclaimed (I will not repeat particularly upon what occasion)
that our ancestors would have started with indignation at practices which
were "as notorious as the sun at noon-day," can you have any doubt in
your mind that the writer of this pamphlet alluded to that exclamation?
Why look at the passage, see, he uses the same words. "Corruption is as
notorious as the sun at noon-day" is his very expression. He is citing
the Speaker's own words, and cannot but be supposed to be speaking of the
very same facts. It was proposed, on that occasion, to impeach a
nobleman, whom I will not name and need not, for those practices. This
however was resisted by almost all, and even by some who were friendly to
Parliamentary reform, and politically adverse to the noblemen, to whom I
allude, not, indeed, upon any pretext of his innocence of the practices,
charged against him; but on the sole ground that those practices were so
general and notorious that they would condemn themselves in sentencing
him; and among so many guilty, it would be unjust to single him alone for
punishment. Yes; although they were practices, at which our ancestors
would have started with indignation, they were the practices of numbers,
and the practices were as notorious as the sun at noon-day; and,
therefore, the proposition of impeachment was rejected, and rightly; for
as it has been said by the first speaker of all antiquity, we cannot call
men to a strict account for their actions, while we are infirm in our own
conduct. If this is the state of one branch of our Legislature, and if
it is avowed, and by those who would conceal it, if concealment were
possible (but it would be as easy to concea