e Foster. They have compared
them with the Journals, and find them correct. The same excellent author
proceeds to demonstrate that whatever he says of trials by impeachment
is equally applicable to trials before the High Steward on indictment;
and consequently, that there is no ground for a distinction, with regard
to the public declaration of the Judges' opinions, founded on the
inapplicability of either of these cases to the other. The argument on
this whole matter is so satisfactory that your Committee has annexed it
at large to their Report.[27] As there is no difference in fact between
these trials, (especially since the act which provides that all the
peers shall be summoned to the trial of a peer,) so there is no
difference in the reason and principle of the publicity, let the matter
of the Steward's jurisdiction, be as it may.

PUBLICITY GENERAL.

Your Committee do not find any positive law which binds the judges of
the courts in Westminster Hall publicly to give a reasoned opinion from
the bench, in support of their judgment upon matters that are stated
before them. But the course hath prevailed from the oldest times. It
hath been so general and so uniform, that it must be considered as the
law of the land. It has prevailed, so far as we can discover, not only
in all the courts which now exist, whether of law or equity, but in
those which have been suppressed or disused, such as the Court of Wards
and the Star Chamber. An author quoted by Rushworth, speaking of the
constitution of that chamber, says,--"And so it was resolved _by the
Judges, on reference made to them; and their opinion, after deliberate
hearing, and view of former precedents, was published in open
court_."[28] It appears elsewhere in the same compiler that all their
proceedings were public, even in deliberating previous to judgment.

The Judges in their reasonings have always been used to observe on the
arguments employed by the counsel on either side, and on the authorities
cited by them,--assigning the grounds for rejecting the authorities
which they reject, or for adopting those to which they adhere, or for a
different construction of law, according to the occasion. This
publicity, not only of decision, but of deliberation, is not confined to
their several courts, whether of law or equity, whether above or at Nisi
Prius; but it prevails where they are assembled, in the Exchequer
Chamber, or at Serjeants' Inn, or wherever matters come befo