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 Managers for the Commons, the
competence of the evidence to be produced, who are to be permitted to
appear, what questions are to be asked of witnesses, and indeed, parcel
by parcel, on the whole of the gross case before them,--as well as to
determine upon the order, method, and process of every part of their
proceedings.
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