qualification, by the Lords,) turned upon _evidence_. Your Committee,
before the trial began, were apprised, by discourses which prudence did
not permit them to neglect, that endeavors would be used to embarrass
them in their proceedings by exceptions against evidence; that the
judgments and opinions of the courts below would be resorted to on this
subject; that there the rules of evidence were precise, rigorous, and
inflexible; and that the counsel for the criminal would endeavor to
introduce the same rules, with the same severity and exactness, into
this trial. Your Committee were fully assured, and were resolved
strenuously to contend, that no doctrine or rule of law, much less the
practice of any court, ought to have weight or authority in Parliament,
further than as such doctrine, rule, or practice is agreeable to the
proceedings in Parliament, or hath received the sanction of approved
precedent there, or is founded on the immutable principles of
substantial justice, without which, your Committee readily agrees, no
practice in any court, high or low, is proper or fit to be maintained.

In this preference of the rules observed in the High Court of
Parliament, preëminently superior to all the rest, there is no claim
made which the inferior courts do not make, each with regard to itself.
It is well known that the rules of proceedings in these courts vary, and
some of them very essentially; yet the usage of each court is the law of
the court, and it would be vain to object to any rule in any court,
that it is not the rule of another court. For instance: as a general
rule, the Court of King's Bench, on trials by jury, cannot receive
depositions, but must judge by testimony _vivâ voce_. The rule of the
Court of Chancery is not only not the same, but it is the reverse, and
Lord Hardwicke ruled accordingly. "The constant and established
proceedings of this Court," said this great magistrate, "are on written
evidence, like the proceedings on the Civil and Canon Law. This is the