The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke Volume XI Part 2

Your Committee thinks it scarcely possible that the Lords could be influenced by such a feeble argument. For, admitting the fact to have been as supposed, there is no sort of reason why so uniform a course of precedents, in a legal court composed of a peer for judge and peers for triers, a course so favorable to all parties and to equal justice, a course in concurrence with the procedure of all our other courts, should not have the greatest authority over their practice in every trial before _the whole body_ of the peerage.

The Earl of Nottingham, who acted as High Steward in one of these commissions, certainly knew what he was saying. He gave no such reason.

His argument for the publicity of the Judges' opinions did not turn at all on the nature of his court, or of his office in that court. It rested on the equity of the principle, and on the fair dealing due to the prisoner.

Lord Somers was in no such court; yet his declaration is full as strong.

He does not, indeed, argue the point, as the Earl of Nottingham did, when he considered it as a new case. Lord Somers considers it as a point quite settled, and no longer standing in need of being supported by reason or precedent.

But it is a mistake that the precedents stated in this Report are wholly drawn from proceedings in that kind of court. Only two are cited which are furnished from a court const.i.tuted in the manner supposed. The rest were in trials by all the peers, and not by a jury of peers with an High Steward.

After long discussions with the Peers on this subject, "the Lords'

committees in a conference told them (the committee of this House, appointed to a conference on the matter) that the High Steward is but Speaker _pro tempore_, and giveth his vote as well as the other lords: this changeth not the nature of the court. And the Lords declared, that they have power enough to proceed to trial, though the King should not name an High Steward." On the same day, "it is declared and ordered by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament a.s.sembled, that the office of High Steward on trials of peers upon impeachments is not necessary to the House of Peers, but that the Lords may proceed in such trials, if an High Steward is not appointed according to their humble desire."[26]

To put the matter out of all doubt, and to remove all jealousy on the part of the Commons, the commission of the Lord High Steward was then altered.

These rights, contended for by the Commons in their impeachments, and admitted by the Peers, were a.s.serted in the proceedings preparatory to the trial of Lord Stafford, in which that long chain of uniform precedents with regard to the publicity of the Judges' opinions in trials begins.

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. It hath been so general and so uniform, that it must be considered as the law of the land. It has prevailed, so far as we can discover, not only in all the courts which now exist, whether of law or equity, but in those which have been suppressed or disused, such as the Court of Wards and the Star Chamber. An author quoted by Rushworth, speaking of the const.i.tution of that chamber, says,--"And so it was resolved _by the Judges, on reference made to them; and their opinion, after deliberate hearing, and view of former precedents, was published in open court_."[28] It appears elsewhere in the same compiler that all their proceedings were public, even in deliberating previous to judgment.

The Judges in their reasonings have always been used to observe on the arguments employed by the counsel on either side, and on the authorities cited by them,--a.s.signing the grounds for rejecting the authorities which they reject, or for adopting those to which they adhere, or for a different construction of law, according to the occasion. This publicity, not only of decision, but of deliberation, is not confined to their several courts, whether of law or equity, whether above or at Nisi Prius; but it prevails where they are a.s.sembled, in the Exchequer Chamber, or at Serjeants' Inn, or wherever matters come before the Judges collectively for consultation and revision. It seems to your Committee to be moulded in the essential frame and const.i.tution of British judicature. Your Committee conceives that the English jurisprudence has not any other sure foundation, nor, consequently, the lives and properties of the subject any sure hold, but in the maxims, rules, and principles, and juridical traditionary line of decisions contained in the notes taken, and from time to time published, (mostly under the sanction of the Judges,) called Reports.

In the early periods of the law it appears to your Committee that a course still better had been pursued, but grounded on the same principles; and that no other cause than the multiplicity of business prevented its continuance. "Of ancient time," says Lord c.o.ke, "in cases of difficulties, either criminal or civil, _the reasons and causes_ of the judgment were set down _upon the record_, and so continued in the reigns of Ed. I. and Ed. II., and then there was no need of reports; but in the reign of Ed. III. (when the law was in its height) the causes and reasons of judgments, in respect of the mult.i.tude of them, are not set down in the record, but then _the great casuists and reporters of cases_ (certain grave and sad men) published the cases, _and the reasons and causes of the judgments or resolutions_, which, from the beginning of the reign of Ed. III. and since, we have in print. But these also, though of great credit and excellent use in their kind, _yet far underneath the authority of the Parliament Rolls, reporting the acts, judgments, and resolutions of that highest court_."[29]

Reports, though of a kind less authentic than the Year Books, to which c.o.ke alludes, have continued without interruption to the time in which we live. It is well known that the elementary treatises of law, and the dogmatical treatises of English jurisprudence, whether they appear under the names of inst.i.tutes, digests, or commentaries, do not rest on the authority of the supreme power, like the books called the Inst.i.tute, Digest, Code, and authentic collations in the Roman law. With us doctrinal books of that description have little or no authority, other than as they are supported by the adjudged cases and reasons given at one time or other from the bench; and to these they constantly refer.

This appears in c.o.ke's Inst.i.tutes, in Comyns's Digest, and in all books of that nature. To give judgment privately is to put an end to reports; and to put an end to reports is to put an end to the law of England. It was fortunate for the Const.i.tution of this kingdom, that, in the judicial proceedings in the case of s.h.i.+p-money, the Judges did not then venture to depart from the ancient course. They gave and they argued their judgment in open court.[30] Their reasons were publicly given, and the reasons a.s.signed for their judgment took away all its authority. The great historian, Lord Clarendon, at that period a young lawyer, has told us that the Judges gave as law from the bench what every man in the hall knew not to be law.

This publicity, and this mode of attending the decision with its grounds, is observed not only in the tribunals where the Judges preside in a judicial capacity, individually or collectively, but where they are consulted by the Peers on the law in all _writs of error_ brought from below. In the opinion they give of the matter a.s.signed as error, one at least of the Judges argues the questions at large. He argues them publicly, though in the Chamber of Parliament,--and in such a manner, that every professor, pract.i.tioner, or student of the law, as well as the parties to the suit, may learn the opinions of all the Judges of all the courts upon those points in which the Judges in one court might be mistaken.

Your Committee is of opinion that nothing better could be devised by human wisdom than argued judgments publicly delivered for preserving unbroken the great traditionary body of the law, and for marking, whilst that great body remained unaltered, every variation in the application and the construction of particular parts, for pointing out the ground of each variation, and for enabling the learned of the bar and all intelligent laymen to distinguish those changes made for the advancement of a more solid, equitable, and substantial justice, according to the variable nature of human affairs, a progressive experience, and the improvement of moral philosophy, from those hazardous changes in any of the ancient opinions and decisions which may arise from ignorance, from levity, from false refinement, from a spirit of innovation, or from other motives, of a nature not more justifiable.

Your Committee, finding this course of proceeding to be concordant with the character and spirit of our judicial proceeding, continued from time immemorial, supported by arguments of sound theory, and confirmed by effects highly beneficial, could not see without uneasiness, in this great trial for Indian offences, a marked innovation. Against their reiterated requests, remonstrances, and protestations, the opinions of the Judges were always taken secretly. Not only the const.i.tutional publicity for which we contend was refused to the request and entreaty of your Committee, but when a n.o.ble peer, on the 24th day of June, 1789, did in open court declare that he would then propose some questions to the Judges in that place, and hoped to receive their answer openly, according to the approved good customs of that and of other courts, the Lords instantly put a stop to the further proceeding by an immediate adjournment to the Chamber of Parliament. Upon this adjournment, we find by the Lords' Journals, that the House, on being resumed, ordered, that "it should resolve itself into a Committee of the whole House, on Monday next, to take into consideration what is the proper manner of putting questions by the Lords to the Judges, and of their answering the same, in judicial proceedings." The House did thereon resolve itself into a committee, from which the Earl of Galloway, on the 29th of the same month, reported as follows:--"That the House has, in the trial of Warren Hastings, Esquire, proceeded in a regular course, in the manner of propounding their questions to the Judges in the Chamber of Parliament, and in receiving their answers to them in the same place."

The resolution was agreed to by the Lords; but the protest as below[31]

was entered thereupon, and supported by strong arguments.

Your Committee remark, that this resolution states only, that the House had proceeded, in this secret manner of propounding questions to the Judges and of receiving their answers, during the trial, and on matters of debate between the parties, "in a regular course." It does not a.s.sert that another course would not have been _as_ regular. It does not state either judicial convenience, principle, or body of precedents for that _regular course_. No such body of precedents appear on the Journal, that we could discover. Seven-and-twenty, at least, in a regular series, are directly contrary to this regular course. Since the era of the 29th of June, 1789, no one question has been admitted to go publicly to the Judges.

This determined and systematic privacy was the more alarming to your Committee, because the questions did not (except in that case) originate from the Lords for the direction of their own conscience. These questions, in some material instances, were not made or allowed by the parties at the bar, nor settled in open court, but differed materially from what your Managers contended was the true state of the question, as put and argued by them. They were such as the Lords thought proper to state for them. Strong remonstrances produced some alteration in this particular; but even after these remonstrances, several questions were made on statements which the Managers never made nor admitted.

Your Committee does not know of any precedent before this, in which the Peers, on a proposal of the Commons, or of a less weighty person before their court, to have the cases publicly referred to the Judges, and their arguments and resolutions delivered in their presence, absolutely refused. The very few precedents of such private reference on trials have been made, as we have observed already, _sub silentio_, and without any observation from the parties. In the precedents we produce, the determination is accompanied with its reasons, and the publicity is considered as the clear, undoubted right of the parties.

Your Committee, using their best diligence, have never been able to form a clear opinion upon the ground and principle of these decisions. The mere result, upon each case decided by the Lords, furnished them with no light, from any principle, precedent, or foregone authority of law or reason, to guide them with regard to the next matter of evidence which they had to offer, or to discriminate what matter ought to be urged or to be set aside: your Committee not being able to divine whether the particular evidence, which, upon a conjectural principle, they might choose to abandon, would not appear to this House, and to the judging world at large, to be admissible, and possibly decisive proof. In these straits, they had and have no choice, but either wholly to abandon the prosecution, and of consequence to betray the trust reposed in them by this House, or to bring forward such matter of evidence as they are furnished with from sure sources of authenticity, and which in their judgment, aided by the best advice they could obtain, is possessed of a moral apt.i.tude juridically to prove or to ill.u.s.trate the case which the House had given them, in charge.

MODE OF PUTTING THE QUESTIONS.

When your Committee came to examine into those private opinions of the Judges, they found, to their no small concern, that the mode both of putting the questions to the Judges, and their answers, was still more unusual and unprecedented than the privacy with which those questions were given and resolved.

This mode strikes, as we apprehend, at the vital privileges of the House. For, with the single exception of the first question put to the Judges in 1788, the case being stated, the questions are raised directly, specifically, and by name, on those privileges: that is, _What evidence is it competent for the Managers of the House of Commons to produce?_ We conceive that it was not proper, _nor justified by a single precedent_, to refer to the Judges of the inferior courts any question, and still less for them to decide in their answer, of what is or is not competent for the House of Commons, or for any committee acting under their authority, to do or not to do, in any instance or respect whatsoever. This new and unheard-of course can have no other effect than to subject to the discretion of the Judges the Law of Parliament and the privileges of the House of Commons, and in a great measure the judicial privileges of the Peers themselves: any intermeddling in which on their part we conceive to be a dangerous and unwarrantable a.s.sumption of power. It is contrary to what has been declared by Lord c.o.ke himself, in a pa.s.sage before quoted, to be the duty of the Judges,--and to what the Judges of former times have confessed to be their duty, on occasions to which he refers in the time of Henry VI. And we are of opinion that the conduct of those sages of the law, and others their successors, who have been thus diffident and cautious in giving their opinions upon matters concerning Parliament, and particularly on the privileges of the House of Commons, was laudable in the example, and ought to be followed: particularly the principles upon which the Judges declined to give their opinions in the year 1614. It appears by the Journals of the Lords, that a question concerning the law relative to impositions having been put to the Judges, the proceeding was as follows. "Whether the Lords the Judges shall be heard deliver their opinion touching the point of impositions, before further consideration be had of answer to be returned to the lower House concerning the message from them lately received. Whereupon the number of the Lords requiring to hear the Judges' opinions by saying '_Content_' exceeding the others which said '_Non Content_,' the Lords the Judges, so desiring, were permitted to withdraw themselves into the Lord Chancellor's private rooms, where having remained awhile and advised together, they returned into the House, and, having taken their places, and standing discovered, did, by the mouth of the Lord Chief-Justice of the King's Bench, humbly desire to be forborne at this time, in this place, to deliver any opinion in this case, for many weighty and important reasons, which his Lords.h.i.+p delivered with great gravity and eloquence; concluding that himself and his brethren are upon particulars in judicial course to speak and judge between the King's Majesty and his people, and likewise between his Highness's subjects, and in no case to be disputants on any side."

Your Committee do not find anything which, through inadvertence or design, had a tendency to subject the law and course of Parliament to the opinions of the Judges of the inferior courts, from that period until the 1st of James II. The trial of Lord Delamere for high treason was had by special commission before the Lord High Steward: it was before the act which directs that _all_ peers should be summoned to such trials. This was not a trial in full Parliament, in which case it was then contended for that the Lord High Steward was the judge of the law, presiding in the Court, but had no vote in the verdict, and that the Lords were triers only, and had no vote in the judgment of law. This was looked on as the course, where the trial was not in full Parliament, in which latter case there was no doubt but that the Lord High Steward made a part of the body of the triers, and that the whole House was the judge.[32] In this cause, after the evidence for the Crown had been closed, the prisoner prayed the Court to adjourn. The Lord High Steward doubted his power to take that step in that stage of the trial; and the question was, "Whether, the trial not being in full Parliament, when the prisoner is upon his trial, and evidence for the King is given, the Lords being (as it may be termed) charged with the prisoner, the Peers may separate for a time, which is the consequence of an adjournment?"

The Lord High Steward doubted of his power to adjourn the Court. The case was evidently new, and his Grace proposed to have the opinion of the Judges upon it. The Judges in consequence offering to withdraw into the Exchequer Chamber, Lord Falconberg "insisted that the question concerned the privilege of the Peerage only, and conceived that _the Judges are not concerned to make any determination in that matter; and being such a point of privilege, certainly the inferior courts have no right to determine it_." It was insisted, therefore, that the Lords triers should retire with the Judges. The Lord High Steward thought differently, and opposed this motion; but finding the other opinion generally prevalent, he gave way, and the Lords triers retired, taking the Judges to their consult. When the Judges returned, they delivered their opinion in _open court_. Lord Chief-Justice Herbert spoke for himself and the rest of the Judges. After observing on the novelty of the case, with a temperate and becoming reserve with regard to the rights of Parliaments, he marked out the limits of the office of the inferior Judges on such occasions, and declared,--"_All that we, the Judges, can do is to acquaint your Grace and the n.o.ble Lords what the law is in the inferior courts in cases of the like nature_, and the reason of the law in those points, and _then leave the jurisdiction of the court to its proper judgment_." The Chief-Justice concluded his statement of the usage below, and his observations on the difference of the cases of a peer tried in full Parliament and by a special commission, in this manner:--"Upon the whole matter, my Lords, whether the Peers being judges in the one and not in the other instance alters the case, or whether the reason of the law in inferior courts why the jury are not permitted to separate until they have discharged themselves of their verdict may have any influence on this case, _where that reason seems to fail_, the prisoner being to be tried by men of unquestionable honor, _we cannot presume so far as to make any determination, in a case which is both new to us and of great consequence in itself_; but think it the proper way for _us_, having laid matters as we conceive them before your Grace and my Lords, _to submit the jurisdiction of your own court to your own determination_."

It appears to your Committee, that the Lords, who stood against submitting the course of their high court to the inferior Judges, and that the Judges, who, with a legal and const.i.tutional discretion, declined giving any opinion in this matter, acted as became them; and your Committee sees no reason why the Peers at this day should be less attentive to the rights of their court with regard to an exclusive judgment on their own proceedings or to the rights of the Commons acting as accusers for the whole commons of Great Britain in that court, or why the Judges should be less reserved in deciding upon any of these points of high Parliamentary privilege, than the Judges of that and the preceding periods. This present case is a proceeding in full Parliament, and not like the case under the commission in the time of James II., and still more evidently out of the province of Judges in the inferior courts.

All the precedents previous to the trial of Warren Hastings, Esquire, seem to your Committee to be uniform. The Judges had constantly refused to give an opinion on any of the powers, privileges, or competencies of either House. But in the present instance your Committee has found, with great concern, a further matter of innovation. Hitherto the constant practice has been to put questions to the Judges but in the three following ways: as, 1st, A question of pure abstract law, without reference to any case, or merely upon an A.B. case stated to them; 2dly, To the legal construction of some act of Parliament; 3dly, To report the course of proceeding in the courts below upon an abstract case. Besides these three, your Committee knows not of a single example of any sort, during the course of any judicial proceeding at the bar of the House of Lords, whether the prosecution has been by indictment, by information from the Attorney-General, or by impeachment of the House of Commons.

In the present trial, the Judges appear to your Committee not to have given their judgment on points of law, stated as such, but to have in effect tried the cause, in the whole course of it,--with one instance to the contrary.

The Lords have stated no question of general law, no question on the construction of an act of Parliament, no question concerning the practice of the courts below. _They put the whole gross case and matter in question, with all its circ.u.mstances, to the Judges._ They have, _for the first time_, demanded of them what particular person, paper, or doc.u.ment ought or ought not to be produced before them by the Managers for the Commons of Great Britain: for instance, whether, under such an article, the Bengal Consultations of such a day, the examination of Rajah Nundcomar, and the like. The operation of this method is in substance not only to make the Judges masters of the whole process and conduct of the trial, but through that medium to transfer to them the ultimate judgment on the cause itself and its merits.

The Judges attendant on the Court of Peers. .h.i.therto have not been supposed to know the particulars and minute circ.u.mstances of the cause, and must therefore be incompetent to determine upon those circ.u.mstances.

The evidence taken, is not, of course, that we can find, delivered to them; nor do we find that in fact any order has been made for that purpose, even supposing that the evidence could at all regularly be put before them. They are present in court, not to hear the trial, but solely to advise in matter of law; they cannot take upon themselves to say anything about the Bengal Consultations, or to know anything of Rajah Nundcomar, of Kelleram, or of Mr. Francis, or Sir John Clavering.

That the House may be the more fully enabled to judge of the nature and tendency of thus putting the question, _specifically, and on the gross case_, your Committee thinks fit here to insert one of those questions, reserving a discussion of its particular merits to another place. It was stated on the 22d of April, 1790, "On that day the Managers proposed to show that Kelleram fell into great balances with the East India Company, in consequence of his appointment." It is so stated in the printed Minutes (p. 1206). But the real tendency and gist of the proposition is not shown. However, the question was put, "Whether it be or be not competent _to the Managers for the Commons to give evidence upon the charge in the sixth article, to prove_ that the rent [at?] which the defendant, Warren Hastings, Esquire, let the lands mentioned in the said sixth article of charge to Kelleram fell into arrear and was deficient; and whether, if proof were offered that the rent fell into arrear immediately after the letting, the evidence in that case would be competent?" The Judges answered, on the 27th of the said month, as follows:--"_It is not competent for the Managers for the House of Commons_ to give evidence upon the charge in the sixth article, to prove that the rent at which the defendant, Warren Hastings, let the lands [mentioned?] in the said sixth article of charge to Kelleram fell into arrear and was deficient."

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 a.s.sumed 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 circ.u.mstance 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 const.i.tution and in the purposes of the High Court of Parliament, and even to reverse the ancient relations between the Lords and the Judges. 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 acc.u.mulative body of the evidence as. .h.i.therto 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. The judges of the inferior courts are by law rendered independent of the Crown. But this, instead of a benefit to the subject, would be a grievance, if no way was left of producing a responsibility.

If the Lords cannot or will not act without the Judges, and if (which G.o.d forbid!) the Commons should find it at any time hereafter necessary to impeach them before the Lords, this House would find the Lords disabled in their functions, fearful of giving any judgment on matter of law or admitting any proof of fact without them [the Judges]; and having once a.s.sumed the rule of proceeding and practice below as their rule, they must at every instant resort, for their means of judging, to the authority of those whom they are appointed to judge.

Your Committee must always act with regard to men as they are. There are no privileges or exemptions from the infirmities of our common nature.

We are sensible that all men, and without any evil intentions, will naturally wish to extend their own jurisdiction, and to weaken all the power by which they may be limited and controlled. It is the business of the House of Commons to counteract this tendency. This House had given to its Managers no power to abandon its privileges and the rights of its const.i.tuents. They were themselves as little disposed as authorized to make this surrender. They are members of this House, not only charged with the management of this impeachment, but partaking of a general trust inseparable from the Commons of Great Britain in Parliament a.s.sembled, one of whose princ.i.p.al functions and duties it is to be observant of the courts of justice, and to take due care that none of them, from the lowest to the highest, shall pursue new courses, unknown to the laws and const.i.tution, of this kingdom, or to equity, sound legal policy, or substantial justice. Your Committee were not sent into Westminster Hall for the purpose of contributing in their persons, and under the authority of the House, to change the course or law of Parliament, which had continued unquestioned for at least four hundred years. Neither was it any part of their mission to suffer precedents to be established, with relation to the law and rule of evidence, which tended in their opinion to shut up forever all the avenues to justice.

They were not to consider a rule of evidence as a means of concealment.

They were not, without a struggle, to suffer any subtleties to prevail which would render a process in Parliament, not the terror, but the protection, of all the fraud and violence arising from the abuse of British power in the East. Accordingly, your Managers contended with all their might, as their predecessors in the same place had contended with more ability and learning, but not with more zeal and more firmness, against those dangerous innovations, as they were successively introduced: they held themselves bound constantly to protest, and in one or two instances they did protest, in discourses of considerable length, against those private, and, for what they could find, unargued judicial opinions, which must, as they fear, introduce by degrees the miserable servitude which exists where the law is uncertain or unknown.

DEBATES ON EVIDENCE.

The chief debates at the bar, and the decisions of the Judges, (which we find in all cases implicitly adopted, in all their extent and without qualification, by the Lords,) turned upon _evidence_. Your Committee, before the trial began, were apprised, by discourses which prudence did not permit them to neglect, that endeavors would be used to embarra.s.s them in their proceedings by exceptions against evidence; that the judgments and opinions of the courts below would be resorted to on this subject; that there the rules of evidence were precise, rigorous, and inflexible; and that the counsel for the criminal would endeavor to introduce the same rules, with the same severity and exactness, into this trial. Your Committee were fully a.s.sured, and were resolved strenuously to contend, that no doctrine or rule of law, much less the practice of any court, ought to have weight or authority in Parliament, further than as such doctrine, rule, or practice is agreeable to the proceedings in Parliament, or hath received the sanction of approved precedent there, or is founded on the immutable principles of substantial justice, without which, your Committee readily agrees, no practice in any court, high or low, is proper or fit to be maintained.

In this preference of the rules observed in the High Court of Parliament, preeminently superior to all the rest, there is no claim made which the inferior courts do not make, each with regard to itself.

It is well known that the rules of proceedings in these courts vary, and some of them very essentially; yet the usage of each court is the law of the court, and it would be vain to object to any rule in any court, that it is not the rule of another court. For instance: as a general rule, the Court of King's Bench, on trials by jury, cannot receive depositions, but must judge by testimony _viva voce_. The rule of the Court of Chancery is not only not the same, but it is the reverse, and Lord Hardwicke ruled accordingly. "The constant and established proceedings of this Court," said this great magistrate, "are on written evidence, like the proceedings on the Civil and Canon Law. This is the course of the Court, and the course of the Court is the law of the Court."[34]

Your Managers were convinced that one of the princ.i.p.al reasons for which this cause was brought into Parliament was the danger that in inferior courts their rule would be formed naturally upon their ordinary experience, and the exigencies of the cases which in ordinary course came before them. This experience, and the exigencies of these cases, extend little further than the concerns of a people comparatively in a narrow vicinage, a people of the same or nearly the same language, religion, manners, laws, and habits: with them an intercourse of every kind was easy.

These rules of law in most cases, and the practice of the courts in all, could not be easily applicable to a people separated from Great Britain by a very great part of the globe,--separated by manners, by principles of religion, and of inveterate habits as strong as nature itself, still more than by the circ.u.mstance of local distance. Such confined and inapplicable rules would be convenient, indeed, to oppression, to extortion, bribery, and corruption, but ruinous to the people, whose protection is the true object of all tribunals and of all their rules.

Even English judges in India, who have been sufficiently tenacious of what they considered as the rules of English courts, were obliged in many points, and particularly with regard to evidence, to relax very considerably, as the civil and politic government has been obliged to do in several other cases, on account of insuperable difficulties arising from a great diversity of manners, and from what may be considered as a diversity even in the very const.i.tution of their minds,--instances of which your Committee will subjoin in a future Appendix.

Another great cause why your Committee conceived this House had chosen to proceed in the High Court of Parliament was because the inferior courts were habituated, with very few exceptions, to try men for the abuse only of their individual and natural powers, which can extend but a little way.[35] Before them, offences, whether of fraud or violence or both, are, for much the greater part, charged upon persons of mean and obscure condition. Those unhappy persons are so far from being supported by men of rank and influence, that the whole weight and force of the community is directed against them. In this case, they are in general objects of protection as well as of punishment; and the course perhaps ought, as it is _commonly_ said to be, not to suffer anything to be applied to their conviction beyond what the strictest rules will permit.

But in the cause which your Managers have in charge the circ.u.mstances are the very reverse to what happens in the cases of mere personal delinquency which come before the [inferior] courts. These courts have not before them persons who act, and who justify their acts, by the nature of a despotical and arbitrary power. The abuses stated in our impeachment are not those of mere individual, natural faculties, but the abuses of civil and political authority. The offence is that of one who has carried with him, in the perpetration of his crimes, whether of violence or of fraud, the whole force of the state,--who, in the perpetration and concealment of offences, has had the advantage of all the means and powers given to government for the detection and punishment of guilt and for the protection of the people. The people themselves, on whose behalf the Commons of Great Britain take up this remedial and protecting prosecution, are naturally timid. Their spirits are broken by the arbitrary power usurped over them, and claimed by the delinquent as his law. They are ready to flatter the power which they dread. They are apt to look for favor [from their governors] by covering those vices in the predecessor which they fear the successor may be disposed to imitate. They have reason to consider complaints as means, not of redress, but of aggravation to their sufferings; and when they shall ultimately hear that the nature of the British laws and the rules of its tribunals are such as by no care or study either they, or even the Commons of Great Britain, who take up their cause, can comprehend, but which in effect and operation leave them unprotected, and render those who oppress them secure in their spoils, they must think still worse of British justice than of the arbitrary power of the Company's servants which hath been exercised to their destruction. They will be forever, what for the greater part they have hitherto been, inclined to compromise with the corruption of the magistrates, as a screen against that violence from which the laws afford them no redress.