choose to abandon, would not appear to this House, and to the judging
world at large, to be admissible, and possibly decisive proof. In these
straits, they had and have no choice, but either wholly to abandon the
prosecution, and of consequence to betray the trust reposed in them by
this House, or to bring forward such matter of evidence as they are
furnished with from sure sources of authenticity, and which in their
judgment, aided by the best advice they could obtain, is possessed of a
moral aptitude juridically to prove or to illustrate the case which the
House had given them, in charge.


MODE OF PUTTING THE QUESTIONS.

When your Committee came to examine into those private opinions of the
Judges, they found, to their no small concern, that the mode both of
putting the questions to the Judges, and their answers, was still more
unusual and unprecedented than the privacy with which those questions
were given and resolved.

This mode strikes, as we apprehend, at the vital privileges of the
House. For, with the single exception of the first question put to the
Judges in 1788, the case being stated, the questions are raised
directly, specifically, and by name, on those privileges: that is, _What
evidence is it competent for the Managers of the House of Commons to
produce?_ We conceive that it was not proper, _nor justified by a single
precedent_, to refer to the Judges of the inferior courts any question,
and still less for them to decide in their answer, of what is or is not
competent for the House of Commons, or for any committee acting under
their authority, to do or not to do, in any instance or respect
whatsoever. This new and unheard-of course can have no other effect than