of public officers through the agency of an
address from both houses to the crown. In days when the king and the
ministers were disposed to defy the law and to evade responsibility
the power of impeachment by the Commons at the bar of the Lords,
originated as early as the reign of Edward III., was of the utmost
importance. When, however, the House of Commons progressed in
competence to the point where it was able to review and control the
conduct of ministers with such thoroughness and continuity as to make
it impossible for them to conduct business without a parliamentary
majority, impeachment lost its value and fell into disuse. The last
occasion upon which impeachment proceedings were instituted was in
1805.[189] Procedure by bill of attainder, arising from the
legislative omnipotence of Parliament and following the ordinary
course of legislation, is also obsolete.

[Footnote 189: Anson, Law and Custom of the
Constitution, I., 362-366; Moran, English
Government, 327-332.]

*137. The House of Lords as a Court.*--Most important among surviving
parliamentary functions of a judicial character is the exercise of
appellate jurisdiction by the House of Lords. The judicial authority
of the Lords is an anomaly, although as it is actually exercised it
does not seriously contravene the principle which forbids the bringing
together of judicial and legislative powers in the same hands.
Historically, it arose from a confusion of the functions of two groups
of men which were long largely identical in personnel, i.e., the
Great Council, on the one hand, and the Lords of Parliament, on (p. 131)
the other. In the reign of Henry IV. the Commons asked specifically to
be relieved from judicial business, and the parliamentary jurisdiction
which survived was recognized thereafter to be vested in the House of
Lords alone. From an early date this jurisdiction was, as it is
to-day, both original and appellate. As a court of first instance the
chamber acquired the right to try peers charged with treason and
felony and, on the accusation of the House of Commons, to bring to
justice, through the process of impeachment, offenders who were not of
the peerage. Nowadays these powers are of no practical consequence.

The position of the Lords as an appellate tribunal, however, is still
a fundamental fact in the judicial system. Starting with control, by
way of appeal, over the courts of c