There are occasions when the Lords have a presiding officer called a Lord High Steward. This is on the trial of a peer, whether upon impeachment or indictment. Here the same rule is stated by Edmund Burke, in his masterly Report to the House of Commons on the impeachment of Warren Hastings:-- “Every peer present at the trial (and every temporal peer hath a right to be present in every part of the proceeding) voteth upon every question of law and fact, and the question is carried by the major vote,--the High Steward himself voting merely as a peer and member of that court, in common with the rest of the peers, and in no other right.”[106] In another place, the Report, quoting the Commons’ Journal, says:-- “That the Lord High Steward was but as a Speaker, or _Chairman_, for the more orderly proceeding at the trials.”[107] And then again:-- “The appointment of him doth not alter the nature of the court, which still remaineth the Court of the Peers in Parliament.”[108] The name of Burke gives to this illustration additional authority and interest. It is not difficult to see how he would have decided the present question. In our day there have been instances of the Lord Chancellor as presiding officer without being a peer. Brougham took his seat on the 22d November, 1830, before his patent as a peer had been made out, and during this interval his energies were suppressed in the simple duty of presiding officer and nothing else. The same was the case with that eminent lawyer, Sir Edward Sugden, who sat as presiding officer on the 4th March, 1852, although still a commoner; and it was also the case with Sir Frederick Thesiger, who sat as presiding officer on the 1st March, 1858, although still a commoner. These instances attest the prevalence of the early rule down to our day. Even Brougham, who never shrank from speech or from the exercise of power, was constrained to bow before its exigency. He sat as Lord Chancellor, and in that character put the question, but this was all, until he became a member of the House. Lord Campbell expressly records, that, while his name appears in the entry of those present on the 22d November, 1830, as _Henricus Brougham, Cancellarius_, “he had no right to debate and vote till the following day,” when the entry of his name and office appears as _Dominus Brougham et Vaux, Cancellarius_.[109]