charged; so that the impeachment in question abated by the act of the commons, and not by the operation of a dissolution. In the cases of Lords Somers, Halifax, Portland, and the Duke of Leeds, impeachment abated in the same manner; the commons not prosecuting, the parties were severally discharged. Now, on which side of the question did the weight of evidence from precedents preponderate? Did not the scale fairly incline in favour of the continuance of impeachments from parliament to parliament? The right of the commons to prosecute an impeachment, until judgment was obtained, in his opinion, was clear, unequivocal, and indisputable, from the authority of such a body of precedents.

After investigating the evidence to be collected from precedents, the practice of parliament, during the last three years, was the next object of enquiry, in the present discussion. Parliament exercised two powers,-legislative and judicial, which had their separate and distinct limits and duration. The confusion of these powers was the principal source of all the doubts upon the present question. Lawyers had differed as much in their opinions respecting writs of error, and petitions of appeal, as upon impeachments; from such collision of opposite sentiments, much satisfaction could not be expected. A reference should, therefore, be made to the clear and established principle of the constitution, in order to remove every cloud of doubt or difficulty. Every act of legislation, it was well known, was terminated by prorogation, as well as by dissolution; but no judicial act was influenced by either. Impeachment, therefore, being a judicial proceeding, could not be affected by prorogation or dissolution. In the case of writs of error, and of petitions of appeal, the process continued from session to session, and from parliament to parliament: much more necessary was it that the proceedings in an impeachment should also continue; for in the one case, there was only one individual against another, but in the other, the house of commons, and all the commons of Great Britain, were parties against a state delinquent. The impeach

ment in question was not the act of the late parliament, but of the whole commons of the realm; the proceeding being in the name both of constituents and representatives. It had been asked, if the house of commons, in this instance, were the attorneys of the people? In one sense they were considered as agents, consulting their own judgment and discretion, in the protection of the interests of their constituents. But they were not the attorneys of the people, as agents delegated with power to act merely by the instructions of their constituents. Such an acceptation of the term should have his heartiest abhorrence and reprobation. An impeachment had been commenced by the commons in the persons of their late representatives; such a proceeding ought not to be discontinued without due enquiry and deliberation; for the house stood in a similar situation with the successor of the king's attorney-general, in the present instance, who was always required to proceed with all the trials already commenced on the part of the king. But in law, it was said, there was no such body as the commons of England recognized: but would any one draw such an absurd inference from an accidental omission, that such a body had no real existence, which was to be regarded as the principal object of legislation in every civilized country? Our ancestors had, in their accustomed wisdom, sufficiently, in his opinion, guarded against such a supposed solecism in politics; by ordering all supplies to be granted in the name of the commons, as well as all impeachments to be laid in their name; when once a proceeding, therefore, assumed a judicial form, its existence no longer depended upon the persons who were immediately concerned in its institution. The house of commons were only the legal organ of instituting impeachments, as the attorney-general was of filing an information ex officio, or an indictment in the name of the king. The public prosecutors in the one case were the commons of the realm, and the king was the prosecutor in the other. From the consideration of the capacity in which the house, as a judicial and not a legislative body, acted in the conduct of impeachments, it there

fore followed, that their proceedings, by the constitution, could not abate or be affected either by a prorogation or a dissolution of parliament.

His next ground of evidence in the discussion of the question, to which he requested the attention of the committee, should be taken from the decisions of the courts of justice, and the authority of eminent lawyers. The authority of the great and venerable Lord Hale was to be distrusted in the present instance, since writs of error, petitions of appeal, and impeachments, were considered by him as legislative, and not judicial proceedings. Now, all the legislative proceedings unquestionably abated by prorogation as well as dissolution; but impeachments, writs of error, and petitions of appeal are judicial proceedings which continue from session to session, and from parliament to parliament. The error of Lord Hale proceeded from his confounding the legislative with the judicial power in parliamentary proceedings. This mistatement appeared from a passage which he here read to the committee, in which writs of error, petitions of appeal, and impeachments, were said to abate, as well by prorogation as dissolution. Lord Holt entertained a different opinion upon the subject, since he had argued from the case of Lord Stafford, as a weighty and irrefragable precedent in favour of the continuances of impeachments and other judicial proceedings, from one parliament to another. Lord chief baron Commyns, an authority of the highest respectability in the courts of justice, was also decided in his opinion upon the subject; for, from a passage which he read out of his Digest, it appeared not only that impeachments continued, but that they should be resumed and prosecuted, until judgment was obtained, notwithstanding any contingent interruptions from either prorogation or dissolution. The authority of the legislature too, in the preamble to an act of the 18th of the king, by implication, was also favourable to the point he endeavoured to establish; besides many cases from Carthew's Reports, and other authorities, might be adduced, which abundantly proved it had been long held that impeachments were

not affected by the operation of a dissolution. If such proceedings had abated, in consequence of such an event, it was evident that the course of public justice would be greatly interrupted. But there was neither precedent nor law which authorized such a deduction; and the continuance of impeachments was frequently rendered indispensably necessary, in order to produce a salutary operation, and to guard against their abuse. If impeachments were allowed to be a branch of the judicial power, they must necessarily have the same operation with the other acts of that power. Writs of error, petitions of appeal, as judicial acts, survived prorogation and dissolution; so also ought impeachments. To admit the continuance of the former, and to insist upon the abatement of the latter, by the operation of a dissolution, were the grossest absurdity: since, as judicial proceedings, they were branches of the same power, and their connection depended upon a permanent union of principle. Those who insisted upon the abatement of impeachments, were consistent, if they also insisted upon the abatements of writs of error and petitions of appeal; but when once the continuance of the latter was allowed, and the abatement of the former contended for, in consequence of a dissolution, then it was evident that impeachments were made, in one instance, a branch of the judicial power, and in another, an act of the legislative, to serve some particular purpose. Now such confusion of the two parliamentary powers he had noticed, should be studiously avoided, lest their proceedings were impeded by endless doubts and difficulties, and might terminate in a great oppression and injustice to individuals, and eventually tend to subvert our excellent constitution. The power of impeachments is a privilege of the first consequence to the liberties of the country; it operated as a salutary check upon those in administration, and effectually guarded against every undue influence of the crown, in the protection of state delinquency. Ought the event of an impeachment, then, to depend upon the operation of a dissolution? No. If the exercise of this power were once to be influenced by such an event, there would be an

end put to official responsibility; the most flagrant acts of corruption, oppression, and injustice, would pass with impunity; for the party impeached might procure, by his own interest, or the influence of his friends, a dissolution of parliament, in order to escape the punishment his offences might justly deserve. Voluntary exilement were, indeed, too heavy a punishment for injured innocence to endure, to avoid an unjust impeachment; but for the guilty delinquent to enjoy such an indulgence, would be no punishment, but rather a reward, for his villainy. The abatement of impeachments, therefore, by a dissolution of parliament, would throw an insurmountable obstacle in the way of public justice, and would deprive the house of a power the most formidable to a corrupt administration, whose exercise served as a shield and bulwark for the constitution.

As to the honourable and learned gentleman's objection, that no man can be a judge, de jure, in a court, without a competent knowledge of the whole proceedings; this was true, in an inferior court of judicature, but was not applicable to the house of lords: for this supreme court of judicature was liable perpetually to change its members in consequence of death, which naturally produced others as their successors. Supposing the new members were ignorant of the proceedings already had of the impeachment depending, what inconvenience could arise from that circumstance, when copies of the whole evidence were printed? They need only refer for the requisite information to the journals. They had a right to judge from the minutes, upon the fidelity and accuracy of which they might always depend, since they were distributed not only among those peers who were present at the taking of the evidence, but among those who were absent, for their information. An impeachment was an extraordinary case, which did not admit of being conducted upon the same rules with an inferior court of judicature. In the one case, judgment was formed upon printed evidence; but in the other, viva voce evidence was certainly requisite. Were the rules of the court of king's bench