examination of witnesses in chief and cross-examination, and
that in general these several parts are properly cast according to the
situation of the parties in the cause; but there neither is nor can be
any precise rule to discriminate the exact bounds between examination
and cross-examination. So as to time there is necessarily some limit,
but a limit hard to fix. The only one which can be fixed with any
tolerable degree of precision is when the judge, after fully hearing all
parties, is to consider of his verdict or his sentence. Whilst the cause
continues under hearing in any shape, or in any stage of the process, it
is the duty of the judge to receive every offer of evidence, apparently
material, suggested to him, though the parties themselves, through
negligence, ignorance, or corrupt collusion, should not bring it
forward. A judge is not placed in that high situation merely as a
passive instrument of parties. He has a duty of his own, independent of
them, and that duty is to investigate the truth. There may be no
prosecutor. In our law a permanent prosecutor is not of necessity. The
Crown prosecutor in criminal cases is a grand jury; and this is
dissolved instantly on its findings and its presentments. But if no
prosecutor appears, (and it has happened more than once,) the court is
obliged through its officer, the clerk of the arraigns, to examine and
cross-examine every witness who presents himself; and the judge is to
see it done effectually, and to act his own part in it,--and this as
long as evidence shall be offered within the time which the mode of
trial will admit.

Your Committee is of opinion, that, if it has happened that witnesses,
or other kinds of evidence, have not been frequently produced after the
closing of the prisoner's defence, or such evidence has not been in
reply given, it has happened from the peculiar nature of our common
judicial proceedings, in which all the matter of evidence must be
presented whilst the bodily force and the memory or other mental
faculties of men can hold out. This does not exceed the compass of one
natural day, or thereabouts: during that short space of time new
evidence very rarely occurs for production by any of the parties;
because the nature of man, joined to the nature of the tribunals, and of
the mode of trial at Common Law, (good and useful on the whole,)
prescribe limits which the mere principles of justice would of
themselves never fix.

But in other courts