such a liberal principle the accuser would have every fair oppor tunity of making good his charges; and the accused would have equal liberty to establish his defence. Nothing short of this procedure could deserve the name of public justice. What! because the fate of one nobleman, from the continuance of impeachment, was supposed hard and oppressive, did it therefore follow that the exercise of such a privilege of the Commons in every instance would be attended with the same obnoxious consequences? If the abuse of an institution was a valid argument of its inutility, the objection might apply; otherwise the honourable and learned gentleman's pathetic expostulation would go for nothing; for in deciding upon the merit of a dry precedent, our passions ought not to interfere with our judicial deliberations. The validity of the order of 1678 stood therefore unimpeached; a precedent which neither eloquence nor sophistry can possibly invalidate. The case of Lord Salisbury and Peterborough, adduced as a precedent in favour of an abatement of impeachments by a dissolution, is equally unfortunate; for there does not appear from the proceedings, any reference whatever, either to the order of 1685, or to any former decision upon the subject. The impeachment in question abated, not by virtue of any usage of parliament, but by the operation of an act of general pardon. The impeachment of Sir Adam Blair and others did not apply; since no attempts were made to renew the prosecution, and they had been held to bail subsequent to a dissolution. Now, if the proceedings had abated in consequence of that event, the parties could not have been held to bail afterwards; the impeachment having determined, they must have been dismissed.—But as the proceedings were pending, unaffected by any dissolution, the parties were bound in a recognisance. The only just inference, therefore, from this case, clearly was, that impeachments did not abate in the manner it had been contended, by a dissolution of parliament. The same conclusion was evidently deducible from the impeachment of Lord Danby; for there cannot remain any doubt as to the sentiments then entertained by parliament; since mons had declined the prosecution. Now three dissolutions of parliament had obtained before he was discharged. It was evident if a dissolution operated an abatement of impeachments, Lord Danby must have been dismissed upon the first dissolution; nay, he would have been, upon that principle, discharged of course. But the case was quite otherwise; for parliament was repeatedly dissolved, and Lord Danby was as often detained, until at length, the Commons declining to prosecute, he was discharged; 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 inquiry 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 impeachment 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 inquiry 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 recognised: 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 civilised 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 peachments, 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 therefore 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 inter ruptions from either prorogation or dissolution. The authority of the legislature too, in the preamble to an act of the 13th 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 authorised 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 impeach |