If incompetent evidence is received by them, there is nothing
to hinder their judging upon it afterwards according to its value: it
may have no weight in their judgment. But if, upon advice of others,
they previously reject information necessary to their proper judgment,
they have no intermediate means of setting themselves right, and they
injure the cause of justice without any remedy. Against errors of juries
there is remedy by a new trial. Against errors of judges there is
remedy, in civil causes, by demurrer and bills of exceptions; against
their final mistake there is remedy by writ of error, in courts of
Common Law. In Chancery there is a remedy by appeal. If they wilfully
err in the rejection of evidence, there was formerly the terror existing
of punishment by impeachment of the Commons. But with regard to the
Lords, there is no remedy for error, no punishment for a wilful wrong.
Your Committee conceives it not improbable that this apparently total
and unreserved submission of the Lords to the dictates of the judges of
the inferior courts (no proper judges, in any light or in any degree, of
the Law of Parliament) may be owing to the very few causes of _original_
jurisdiction, and the great multitude of those of _appellate_
jurisdiction, which come before them.
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