is
question; the second is in a shape apparently more abstracted, and more
nearly approaching to Parliamentary regularity,--on the competence of
the evidence itself, in the case of a supposed circumstance being
superadded. The Judges answered only the first, denying flatly the
competence of the Managers. As to the second, the competence of the
supposed evidence, they are profoundly silent. Having given this blow to
our competence, about the other question, (which was more within their
province,) namely, the competence of evidence on a case hypothetically
stated, they give themselves no trouble. The Lords on that occasion
rejected the whole evidence. On the face of the Judges' opinion it is a
determination _on a case_, the trial of which was not with them, but it
contains _no rule or principle of law_, to which alone it was their duty
to speak.[33]

These essential innovations tend, as your Committee conceives, to make
an entire alteration in the constitution and in the purposes of the High
Court of Parliament, and even to reverse the ancient relations between
the Lords and the Judges. They tend wholly to take away from the Commons
the benefit of making good their case before the proper judges, and
submit this high inquest to the inferior courts.

Your Committee sees no reason why, on the same principles and
precedents, the Lords may not terminate their proceedings in this, and
in all future trials, by sending the whole body of evidence taken before
them, in the shape of a special verdict, to the Judges, and may not
demand of them, whether they ought, on the whole matter, to acquit or
condemn the prisoner; nor can we discover any cause that should hinder
them [the Judges] from deciding on the accumulative body of the evidence
as hitherto they have done in its parts, and from dictating the
existence or non-existence of a misdemeanor or other crime in the
prisoner as they think fit, without any more reference to principle or
precedent of law than hitherto they have thought proper to apply in
determining on the several parcels of this cause.

Your Committee apprehends that very serious inconveniencies and
mischiefs may hereafter arise from a practice in the House of Lords of
considering itself as unable to act without the judges of the inferior
courts, of implicitly following their dictates, of adhering with a
literal precision to the very words of their responses, and putting them
to decide on the competence of the Mana