, could not see without uneasiness, in this
great trial for Indian offences, a marked innovation. Against their
reiterated requests, remonstrances, and protestations, the opinions of
the Judges were always taken secretly. Not only the constitutional
publicity for which we contend was refused to the request and entreaty
of your Committee, but when a noble peer, on the 24th day of June, 1789,
did in open court declare that he would then propose some questions to
the Judges in that place, and hoped to receive their answer openly,
according to the approved good customs of that and of other courts, the
Lords instantly put a stop to the further proceeding by an immediate
adjournment to the Chamber of Parliament. Upon this adjournment, we find
by the Lords' Journals, that the House, on being resumed, ordered, that
"it should resolve itself into a Committee of the whole House, on
Monday next, to take into consideration what is the proper manner of
putting questions by the Lords to the Judges, and of their answering the
same, in judicial proceedings." The House did thereon resolve itself
into a committee, from which the Earl of Galloway, on the 29th of the
same month, reported as follows:--"That the House has, in the trial of
Warren Hastings, Esquire, proceeded in a regular course, in the manner
of propounding their questions to the Judges in the Chamber of
Parliament, and in receiving their answers to them in the same place."
The resolution was agreed to by the Lords; but the protest as below[31]
was entered thereupon, and supported by strong arguments.

Your Committee remark, that this resolution states only, that the House
had proceeded, in this secret manner of propounding questions to the
Judges and of receiving their answers, during the trial, and on matters
of debate between the parties, "in a regular course." It does not
assert that another course would not have been _as_ regular. It does not
state either judicial convenience, principle, or body of precedents for
that _regular course_. No such body of precedents appear on the Journal,
that we could discover. Seven-and-twenty, at least, in a regular series,
are directly contrary to this regular course. Since the era of the 29th
of June, 1789, no one question has been admitted to go publicly to the
Judges.

This determined and systematic privacy was the more alarming to your
Committee, because the questions did not (except in that case) originate
from the Lords for the di