Your Committee finds that a protest, with reasons at large, was entered
by several lords against this determination of their court.[9] It is
always an advantage to those who protest, that their reasons appear upon
record; whilst the reasons of the majority, who determine the question,
do not appear. This would be a disadvantage of such importance as
greatly to impair, if not totally to destroy, the effect of precedent as
authority, if the reasons which prevailed were not justly presumed to be
more valid than those which have been obliged to give way: the former
having governed the final and conclusive decision of a competent court.
But your Committee, combining the fact of this decision with the early
decision just quoted, and with the total absence of any precedent of an
objection, before that time or since, allowed to pleading, or what has
any relation to the rules and principles of pleading, as used in
Westminster Hall, has no doubt that the House of Lords was governed in
the 9th of Anne by the very same principles which it had solemnly
declared in the 11th of Richard II.

But besides the presumption in favor of the reasons which must be
supposed to have produced this solemn judgment of the Peers, contrary to
the practice of the courts below, as declared by all the Judges, it is
probable that the Lords were unwilling to take a step which might admit
that anything in that practice should be received as their rule. It must
be observed, however, that the reasons against the article alleged in
the protest were by no means solely bottomed in the practice of the
courts below, as if the main reliance of the protesters was upon that
usage. The protesting minority maintained that it was not agreeable to
_several precedents in Parliament_; of which they cited many in favor
of their opinion. It appears by the Journals, that the clerks were
ordered to search for precedents, and a committee of peers was appointed
to inspect the said precedents, and to report upon them,--and that they