From form of procedure I pass to rules of evidence; and here again the Senate must avoid technicalities, and not allow any artificial rule to shut out the truth. It would allow no such thing on the expulsion of a Senator. How allow it on the expulsion of a President? On this account I voted to admit all evidence offered during the trial,--believing, in the first place, that it ought to be heard and considered, and, in the second place, that, even if shut out from this Chamber, it could not be shut out from the public, or be shut out from history, both of which must be the ultimate judges. On the impeachment of Prince Polignac and his colleagues of the French Cabinet, in 1830, for signing the ordinances which cost Charles the Tenth his throne, some forty witnesses were sworn, without objection, in a brief space of time, and no testimony was excluded. An examination of the two volumes entitled “Procès des Derniers Ministres de Charles X.” confirms what I say. This example, which commends itself to the enlightened reason, seems in harmony with declared principles of Parliamentary Law. As in pleadings, so in evidence, the Law of Parliament, and not the Common Law, is the guide of the Senate. In other courts the rules vary, as on trial by jury in the King’s Bench depositions are not received, while in Chancery just the reverse is the case. The Court of Parliament has its own rules. Here again I quote the famous Report:-- “No doctrine or rule of law, much less the practice of any court, ought to have weight or authority in Parliament further than as such doctrine, rule, or practice is agreeable to the proceedings in Parliament, or hath received the sanction of approved precedent there, _or is founded on the immutable principles of substantial justice_, without which, your Committee readily agrees, no practice in any court, high or low, is proper or fit to be maintained.”[183] The true rule was enunciated:-- “The Court of Parliament ought to be open with great facility to the production of all evidence, except that which the precedents of Parliament teach them authoritatively to reject, or which hath no sort of natural aptitude directly or circumstantially to prove the case.… The Lords ought _to enlarge, and not to contract, the rules of evidence_, according to the nature and difficulties of the case.”[184] Its point appears in a single sentence:-- “To refuse evidence is to refuse to hear the cause.”[185] In striking harmony with this most reasonable conclusion is the well-known postulate of Jeremy Bentham, who gave so much thought to the Law of Evidence: “Evidence is the basis of justice: to exclude evidence is to exclude justice.”[186]