conference was held in the Painted Chamber; and there Hartington,
who appeared for the Commons, declared that he was authorized, by
those who had sent him, to assure the Lords that Duncombe had, in
his place in Parliament, owned the misdeeds which he now
challenged his accusers to bring home to him. The Lords, however,
rightly thought that it would be a strange and a dangerous thing
to receive a declaration of the House of Commons in its
collective character as conclusive evidence of the fact that a
man had committed a crime. The House of Commons was under none of
those restraints which were thought necessary in ordinary cases
to protect innocent defendants against false witnesses. The House
of Commons could not be sworn, could not be cross-examined, could
not be indicted, imprisoned, pilloried, mutilated, for perjury.
Indeed the testimony of the House of Commons in its collective
character was of less value than the uncontradicted testimony of
a single member. For it was only the testimony of the majority of
the House. There might be a large respectable minority whose
recollections might materially differ from the recollections of
the majority. This indeed was actually the case. For there had
been a dispute among those who had heard Duncombe's confession as
to the precise extent of what he had confessed; and there had
been a division; and the statement which the Upper House was
expected to receive as decisive on the point of fact had been at
last carried only by ninety votes to sixty-eight. It should seem
therefore that, whatever moral conviction the Lords might feel of
Duncombe's guilt, they were bound, as righteous judges, to
absolve him.

After much animated debate, they divided; and the bill was lost
by forty-eight votes to forty-seven. It was proposed by some of