nor applied_,--unless, when a person did or said anything, it be
known, not generally and abstractedly, that a paper was read to him, but
particularly and specifically _what were the contents of that paper_:
whether they were matters lightly or weightily alleged,--within the
power of the party accused to have confuted on the spot, if false,--or
such as, though he might have denied, he could not instantly have
disproved. The doctrine appeared and still appears to your Committee to
be totally abhorrent from the genius of circumstantial evidence, and
mischievously subversive of its use. We did, however, offer that
extraneous proof which was demanded of us; but it was refused, as well
as the office document.

Your Committee thought themselves the more bound to contend for every
mode of evidence _to the intention,_ because in many of the cases the
gross fact was admitted, and the prisoner and his counsel set up
pretences of public necessity and public service for his justification.
No way lay open for rebutting this justification, but by bringing out
all the circumstances attendant on the transaction.

ORDER AND TIME OF PRODUCING EVIDENCE.

Your Committee found great impediment in the production of evidence, not
only on account of the general doctrines supposed to exist concerning
its inadmissibility, drawn from its own alleged natural incompetency, or
from its inapplicability under the pleading of the impeachment of this
House, but also from the mode of proceeding in bringing it forward. Here
evidence which we thought necessary to the elucidation of the cause was
not suffered, upon the supposed rules of _examination in chief and
cross-examination_, and on supposed rules forming a distinction between
evidence _originally_ produced on the charge and evidence offered on
_the reply_.

On all these your Committee observes in general, that, if the rules
which respect the substance of the evidence are (as the great lawyers on
whose authority we stand assert they are) no more than rules of
convenience, much more are those subordinate rules which regard the
order, the manner, and the time of the arrangement. These are purely
arbitrary, without the least reference to any fixed principle in the
nature of things, or to any settled maxim of jurisprudence, and
consequently are variable at every instant, as the conveniencies of the
cause may require.

We admit, that, in the order of mere arrangement, there is a difference
between