but
that a new witness was then come into court, who had not been in court
before.[81] These Justices apparently were of the same opinion on this
point with the Justices who gave their opinion in the case of Lord
Stafford.

Your Committee, on this point, as on the former, cannot discover any
authority for the decision of the House of Lords in the Law of
Parliament, or in the law practice of any court in this kingdom.

PRACTICE BELOW.

Your Committee, not having learned that the resolutions of the Judges
(by which the Lords have been guided) were supported by any authority in
law to which they could have access, have heard by rumor that they have
been justified upon the practice of the courts in ordinary trials by
commission of Oyer and Terminer. To give any legal precision to this
term of _practice_, as thus applied, your Committee apprehends it must
mean, that the judge in those criminal trials has so regularly rejected
a certain kind of evidence, when offered there, that it is to be
regarded in the light of a case frequently determined by legal
authority. If such had been discovered, though your Committee never
could have allowed these precedents as rules for the guidance of the
High Court of Parliament, yet they should not be surprised to see the
inferior judges forming their opinions on their own confined practice.
Your Committee, in their inquiry, has found comparatively few reports of
criminal trials, except the collection under the title of "State
Trials," a book compiled from materials of very various authority; and
in none of those which we have seen is there, as appears to us, a single
example of the rejection of evidence similar to that rejected by the
advice of the Judges in the House of Lords. Neither, if such examples
did exist, could your Committee allow them to apply directly and
necessarily, as a measure of reason, to the proceedings of a court
constituted so very differently from those in which the Common Law is
administered. In the trials below, the Judges decide on the competency
of the evidence before it goes to the jury, and (under the correctives,
in the use of their discretion, stated before in this Report) with great
propriety and wisdom. Juries are taken promiscuously from the mass of
the people. They are composed of men who, in many instances, in most
perhaps, never were concerned in any causes, judicially or otherwise,
before the time of their service. They have generally no previous
pr