The House will observe that on the question two cases of competence were put: the first, on the competence of Managers for the House of Commons to give the evidence supposed to be offered by them, but which we deny to have been offered in the manner and for the purpose assumed in this question; the second is in a shape apparently more abstracted, and more nearly approaching to Parliamentary regularity,--on the competence of the evidence itself, in the case of a supposed circumstance being superadded. The Judges answered only the first, denying flatly the competence of the Managers. As to the second, the competence of the supposed evidence, they are profoundly silent. Having given this blow to our competence, about the other question, (which was more within their province,) namely, the competence of evidence on a case hypothetically stated, they give themselves no trouble. The Lords on that occasion rejected the whole evidence. On the face of the Judges' opinion it is a determination _on a case_, the trial of which was not with them, but it contains _no rule or principle of law_, to which alone it was their duty to speak.[33] These essential innovations tend, as your Committee conceives, to make an entire alteration in the constitution and in the purposes of the High Court of Parliament, and even to reverse the ancient relations between the Lords and the Judges. They tend wholly to take away from the Commons the benefit of making good their case before the proper judges, and submit this high inquest to the inferior courts. Your Committee sees no reason why, on the same principles and precedents, the Lords may not terminate their proceedings in this, and in all future trials, by sending the whole body of evidence taken before them, in the shape of a special verdict, to the Judges, and may not demand of them, whether they ought, on the whole matter, to acquit or condemn the prisoner; nor can we discover any cause that should hinder them [the Judges] from deciding on the accumulative body of the evidence as hitherto they have done in its parts, and from dictating the existence or non-existence of a misdemeanor or other crime in the prisoner as they think fit, without any more reference to principle or precedent of law than hitherto they have thought proper to apply in determining on the several parcels of this cause.