el, and should be furnished, ten days before the trial, with a copy
of the indictment, and with a list of the freeholders from among whom
the jury was to be taken; that his witnesses should be sworn, and that
they should be cited by the same process by which the attendance of the
witnesses against him was secured.

The Bill went to the Upper House, and came back with an important
amendment. The Lords had long complained of the anomalous and iniquitous
constitution of that tribunal which had jurisdiction over them in cases
of life and death. When a grand jury has found a bill of indictment
against a temporal peer for any offence higher than a misdemeanour, the
Crown appoints a Lord High Steward; and in the Lord High Steward's
Court the case is tried. This Court was anciently composed in two very
different ways. It consisted, if Parliament happened to be sitting, of
all the members of the Upper House. When Parliament was not sitting, the
Lord High Steward summoned any twelve or more peers at his discretion
to form a jury. The consequence was that a peer accused of high treason
during a recess was tried by a jury which his prosecutors had packed.
The Lords now demanded that, during a recess as well as during a
session, every peer accused of high treason should be tried by the whole
body of the peerage.

The demand was resisted by the House of Commons with a vehemence and
obstinacy which men of the present generation may find it difficult to
understand. The truth is that some invidious privileges of peerage
which have since been abolished, and others which have since fallen
into entire desuetude, were then in full force, and were daily used.
No gentleman who had had a dispute with a nobleman could think, without
indignation, of the advantages enjoyed by the favoured caste. If His
Lordship were sued at law, his privilege enabled him to impede the
course of justice. If a rude word were spoken of him, such a word as
he might himself utter with perfect impunity, he might vindicate his
insulted dignity both by civil and criminal proceedings. If a barrister,
in the discharge of his duty to a client, spoke with severity of the
conduct of a noble seducer, if an honest squire on the racecourse
applied the proper epithets to the tricks of a noble swindler, the
affronted patrician had only to complain to the proud and powerful body
of which he was a member. His brethren made his cause their own. The
offender was taken into custody by