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.  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 God 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 assumed 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 constituents.  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