"
The House will observe that on the question two cases of competence were
put: the first, on the competence of Managers for the House of Commons
to give the evidence supposed to be offered by them, but which we deny
to have been offered in the manner and for the purpose assumed in this
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.
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