For these last citations, and some of the remarks, your Committee are
indebted to the learned and upright Justice 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.
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