Lord Chancellor. I do not make myself understood.  The objection is not that there has not been evidence given upon the 17th article, but at the close of the case on the part of the Managers for the House of Commons no mention having been made of the matter contained in the 17th article, that therefore, although it may all have been admitted by the answer to be true, yet in justice, if from that answer you ground the charge, it is necessary the defendant should be heard upon it.

Mr. Burke. If your Lordships choose that the defendant shall be heard upon it, we have no kind of objection, nor ever had, or proposed an objection to the defendant being heard upon it.  Your Lordships know that the defendant’s counsel value themselves upon having abandoned their defence against certain parts of the charge; your Lordships know that they declared that they broke off thus in the middle of their defence in order to expedite this business.

Lord Chancellor. Referring to the proceedings, I think it a matter perfectly clear, that, in the course of the charge, after certain articles had been gone through, the Managers for the Commons closed the case there, leaving therefore all the other articles, excepting those that had been discussed, as matters standing with the answers against them, but not insisted upon in making out the charge.  Of course, therefore, if the defendant had gone into any of those articles, the defendant must have been stopped upon them, because he would then have been making a case in defence to that which had not been made a case in the prosecution.  The objection, therefore, is not at all that no evidence has been examined.  To be sure, it would be an answer to that to say, you are now proceeding upon an admission; but even upon those facts that are admitted, (if the facts are admitted that are insisted upon as matter in charge,) that should come in the original state of the cause, and the defendant in common justice must be heard upon that, and then, and then only, come the observations in reply.

Mr. Burke. We do not know, not are informed, that any charge, information, or indictment, that is before the court, and upon record, and is not denied by the defendant, does not stand in full force against him.  We conceive it to be so; we conceive it to be agreeable to the analogy of all proceedings; and the reason why we did not go into and insist upon it was, that, having a very long cause before us, and having the most full and complete admission upon this subject, we did not proceed further in it.  The defendant defends himself by averring that it was not his duty.  It was not our business to prove that it was his duty.  It was he that admitted the facts assumed to be the foundation of his duty; the negative he was bound to prove, and he never offered to prove it.  All that I can say upon this point is, that his delinquency