disposed to imitate. They have reason to consider complaints as means,
not of redress, but of aggravation to their sufferings; and when they
shall ultimately hear that the nature of the British laws and the rules
of its tribunals are such as by no care or study either they, or even
the Commons of Great Britain, who take up their cause, can comprehend,
but which in effect and operation leave them unprotected, and render
those who oppress them secure in their spoils, they must think still
worse of British justice than of the arbitrary power of the Company's
servants which hath been exercised to their destruction. They will be
forever, what for the greater part they have hitherto been, inclined to
compromise with the corruption of the magistrates, as a screen against
that violence from which the laws afford them no redress.

For these reasons your Committee did and do strongly contend that the
Court of Parliament ought to be open with great facility to the
production of all evidence, except that which the precedents of
Parliament teach them authoritatively to reject, or which hath no sort
of natural aptitude directly or circumstantially to prove the case. They
have been and are invariably of opinion that the Lords ought _to
enlarge, and not to contrast, the rules of evidence, according to the
nature and difficulties of the case_, for redress to the injured, for
the punishment of oppression, for the detection of fraud,--and above
all, to prevent, what is the greatest dishonor to all laws and to all
tribunals, the failure of justice. To prevent the last of these evils
all courts in this and all countries have constantly made all their
maxims and principles concerning testimony to conform; although such
courts have been bound undoubtedly by stricter rules, both of form and
of prescript cases, than the sovereign jurisdiction exercised by the
Lords on the impeachment of the Commons ever has been or ever ought to
be. Therefore your Committee doth totally reject any rules by which the