as pointed out the mode of procedure as
differing from that adopted in the great trial of Warren Hastings,
twenty years before; and, by reason of that difference, forming a model
for future proceedings of the same kind, if, unhappily, there should
ever be occasion given for a similar prosecution. The credit of the
difference Lord Campbell gives to the Chancellor, Lord Erskine, who,
"instead of allowing the House of Lords to sit to hear the case a few
days in a year, and, when sitting, being converted from a court of
justice into a theatre for rhetorical display, insisted that it should
sit, like every other criminal tribunal, _de die in diem_, till the
verdict was delivered. And he enforced both upon the managers of the
House of Commons and on the counsel for the defendant the wholesome
rules of procedure established for the detection of crime and the
protection of innocence."[152] It is well known that on the trial of
Hastings the managers of that impeachment, and most especially Burke,
claimed a right of giving evidence such as no court of law would have
admitted, and set up what they entitled "a usage of Parliament
independent of and contradistinguished from the common law."[153] But on
that occasion Lord Thurlow, then Chancellor, utterly denied the
existence of any such usage--a usage which, "in times of barbarism, when
to impeach a man was to ruin him by the strong hand of power, was quoted
in order to justify the most arbitrary proceedings." He instanced the
trial of Lord Stafford, as one which "was from beginning to end marked
by violence and injustice," and expressed a "hope that in these
enlightened days no man would be tried but by the law of the land." We
may fairly agree with Lord Campbell, that it is to be hoped that the
course adopted by Lord Erskine in this case has settled the principle
and mode of procedure for all future time; since certainly the
importance of an impeachment, both as to the state interests involved in
it, and the high position and authority of the defendant, ought to be
considered as reasons for adhering with the greatest closeness to the
strict rules of law, rather than for relaxing them in any particular.

But, as was natural, the public could spare little attention for
anything except the war, and the arrangements made by the minister for
engaging in it with effect; the interest which such a state of things
always kindles being in this instance greatly inflamed by Napoleon's
avowal