y, the duration of the trial is to be attributed
to objections taken by the prisoner's counsel to the admissibility of
several documents and persons offered as evidence on the part of the
prosecution. These objections amounted to sixty-two: they gave rise to
several debates, and to twelve references from the Court to the Judges.
On the part of the Managers, the number of objections was small; the
debates upon them were short; there was not upon them any reference to
the Judges; and the Lords did not even retire upon any of them to the
Chamber of Parliament.

This last cause of the number of sitting days your Committee considers
as far more important than all the rest. The questions upon the
admissibility of evidence, the manner in which these questions were
stated and were decided, the modes of proceeding, the great uncertainty
of the principle upon which evidence in that court is to be admitted or
rejected,--all these appear to your Committee materially to affect the
constitution of the House of Peers as a court of judicature, as well as
its powers, and the purposes it was intended to answer in the state. The
Peers have a valuable interest in the conservation of their own lawful
privileges. But this interest is not confined to the Lords. The Commons
ought to partake in the advantage of the judicial rights and privileges
of that high court. Courts are made for the suitors, and not the suitors
for the court. The conservation of all other parts of the law, the whole
indeed of the rights and liberties of the subject, ultimately depends
upon the preservation of the Law of Parliament in its original force and
authority.

Your Committee had reason to entertain apprehensions that certain
proceedings in this trial may possibly limit and weaken the means of
carrying on any future impeachment of the Commons. As your Committee
felt these apprehensions strongly, they thought it their duty to begin
with humbly submitting facts and observations on the proceedings
concerning evidence to the consideration of this House, before they
proceed to state the other matters which come within the scope of the
directions which they have received.

To enable your Committee the better to execute the task imposed upon
them in carrying on the impeachment of this House, and to find some
principle on which they were to order and regulate their conduct
therein, they found it necessary to look attentively to the jurisdiction
of the court in which the