I would take notice that we are upon an impeachment, not
upon an indictment. The courts below have set forms to themselves, which
have prevailed for a long course of time, and thereby are become the
forms by which those courts are to govern themselves; but it never was
thought that the forms of those courts had any influence on the
proceedings of Parliament. In Richard II.'s time, it is said in the
records of Parliament, that proceedings in Parliament are not to be
governed by the forms of Westminster Hall. We are in the case of an
impeachment, and in the Court of Parliament. Your Lordships have already
given judgment against six upon this impeachment, and it is warranted by
the precedents in Parliament; therefore we insist that the articles are
good in substance."
Mr. Cowper.--"They [the counsel] cannot but know that the usages of
Parliaments are part of the laws of the land, although they differ in
many instances from the Common Law, as practised in the inferior courts,
in point of form. My Lords, if the Commons, in preparing articles of
impeachment, should govern themselves by precedents of indictments, in
my humble opinion they would depart from the ancient, nay, the constant,
usage and practice of Parliament.
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