ommittee concludes their precedents begun under Lord Nottingham,
and ended under Lord Hardwicke. They are of opinion that a body of
precedents so uniform, so accordant with principle, made in such times,
and under the authority of a succession of such great men, ought not to
have been departed from. The single precedent to the contrary, to which
your Committee has alluded above, was on the trial of the Duchess of
Kingston, in the reign of his present Majesty. But in that instance the
reasons of the Judges were, by order of the House, delivered in writing,
and entered at length on the Journals:[23] so that the legal principle
of the decision is equally to be found: which is not the case in any one
instance of the present impeachment.

The Earl of Nottingham, in Lord Cornwallis's case, conceived, though it
was proper and agreeable to justice, that this mode of putting questions
to the Judges and receiving their answer in public was not supported by
former precedents; but he thought a book of authority had declared in
favor of this course. Your Committee is very sensible, that, antecedent
to the great period to which they refer, there are instances of
questions having been put to the Judges privately. But we find the
_principle_ of publicity (whatever variations from it there might be in
practice) to have been so clearly established at a more early period,
that all the Judges of England resolved in Lord Morley's trial, in the
year 1666, (about twelve years before the observation of Lord
Nottingham,) _on a supposition that the trial should be actually
concluded, and the Lords retired to the Chamber of Parliament to consult
on their verdict_, that even in that case, (much stronger than the
observation of your Committee requires for its support,) if their
opinions should then be demanded by the Peers, for the information of
their private conscience, yet they determined that they should be given
in public. This resolution is in itself so solemn, and is so bottomed on
constitutional principle and legal policy, that your Committee have
thought fit to insert it _verbatim_ in their Report, as they relied upon
it at the bar of the Court, when they contended for the same publicity.

"It was resolved, that, in case the Peers who are triers, _after the
evidence given, and the prisoner withdrawn, and they gone to consult of
the verdict_, should desire to speak with any of the Judges, to have
their opinion upon any point of law, that, i