ns, any new witnesses and proofs that can
affect the prisoner ought to be received; which," says he, "is true in a
case where a private prosecutor has intervened, who produces the
witnesses. But if the judge proceeds by way of inquisition _ex officio_,
then, even after the completion of the examination of witnesses against
the prisoner, new witnesses may be received and examined, and, on new
grounds of suspicion arising, new articles may be formed, according to
the common opinion of the doctors; and as it is the most generally
received, so it is most agreeable to reason."[72] And in another
chapter, relative to the ordinary criminal process by a private
prosecutor, he lays it down, on the authority of Angelus, Bartolus, and
others, that, after the right of the party prosecuting is expired, the
judge, taking up the matter _ex officio_, may direct new witnesses and
new proofs, even after publication.[73] Other passages from the same
writer and from others might be added; but your Committee trusts that
what they have produced is sufficient to show the general principles of
the Imperial Criminal Law.

The High Court of Parliament bears in its modes of proceeding a much
greater resemblance to the course of the Court of Chancery, the
Admiralty, and Ecclesiastical Courts, (which are the King's courts too,
and their law the law of the land,) than to those of the Common Law. The
accusation is brought into Parliament, at this very day, by _exhibiting
articles_; which your Committee is informed is the regular mode of
commencing a criminal prosecution, where the office of the judge is
promoted, in the Civil and Canon Law courts of this country. The answer,
again, is usually specific, both to the fact and the law alleged in each
particular article; which is agreeable to the proceeding of the Civil
Law, and not of the Common Law.

Anciently the resemblance was much nearer and stronger. Selden, who was
himself a great ornament of the Common Law, and who was personally
engaged in most of the impeachments of his time, has written expressly
on the judicature in Parliament. In his fourth chapter, intituled, _Of
Witnesses_, he lays down the practice of his time, as well as of ancient
times, with respect to the proof by examination; and it is clearly a
practice more similar to that of the Civil than the Common Law. "The
practice at this day," says he, "is to swear the witnesses in open
House, and then to examine them there, _or at a commit