cern, that the mode both of
putting the questions to the Judges, and their answers, was still more
unusual and unprecedented than the privacy with which those questions
were given and resolved.

This mode strikes, as we apprehend, at the vital privileges of the
House. For, with the single exception of the first question put to the
Judges in 1788, the case being stated, the questions are raised
directly, specifically, and by name, on those privileges: that is, _What
evidence is it competent for the Managers of the House of Commons to
produce?_ We conceive that it was not proper, _nor justified by a single
precedent_, to refer to the Judges of the inferior courts any question,
and still less for them to decide in their answer, of what is or is not
competent for the House of Commons, or for any committee acting under
their authority, to do or not to do, in any instance or respect
whatsoever. This new and unheard-of course can have no other effect than
to subject to the discretion of the Judges the Law of Parliament and the
privileges of the House of Commons, and in a great measure the judicial
privileges of the Peers themselves: any intermeddling in which on their
part we conceive to be a dangerous and unwarrantable assumption of
power. It is contrary to what has been declared by Lord Coke himself,
in a passage before quoted, to be the duty of the Judges,--and to what
the Judges of former times have confessed to be their duty, on occasions
to which he refers in the time of Henry VI. And we are of opinion that
the conduct of those sages of the law, and others their successors, who
have been thus diffident and cautious in giving their opinions upon
matters concerning Parliament, and particularly on the privileges of the
House of Commons, was laudable in the example, and ought to be followed:
particularly the principles upon which the Judges declined to give their
opinions in the year 1614. It appears by the Journals of the Lords, that
a question concerning the law relative to impositions having been put to
the Judges, the proceeding was as follows. "Whether the Lords the Judges
shall be heard deliver their opinion touching the point of impositions,
before further consideration be had of answer to be returned to the
lower House concerning the message from them lately received. Whereupon
the number of the Lords requiring to hear the Judges' opinions by saying
'_Content_' exceeding the others which said '_Non Content_,' the Lord