Your Committee conceives it not improbable that this apparently total and unreserved submission of the Lords to the dictates of the judges of the inferior courts (no proper judges, in any light or in any degree, of the Law of Parliament) may be owing to the very few causes of _original_ jurisdiction, and the great multitude of those of _appellate_ jurisdiction, which come before them. In cases of appeal, or of error, (which is in the nature of an appeal,) the court of appeal is obliged to judge, not by _its own_ rules, acting in another capacity, or by those which it shall choose _pro re nata_ to make, but by the rules of the inferior court from whence the appeal comes. For the fault or the mistake of the inferior judge is, that he has not proceeded, as he ought to do, according to the law which he was to administer; and the correction, if such shall take place, is to compel the court from whence the appeal comes to act as originally it ought to have acted, according to law, as the law ought to have been understood and practised in that tribunal. The Lords, in such cases of necessity, judge on the grounds of the law and practice of the courts below; and this they can very rarely learn with precision, but from the body of the Judges. Of course much deference is and ought to be had to their opinions. But by this means a confusion may arise (if not well guarded against) between what they do in their _appellate_ jurisdiction, which is frequent, and what they ought to do in their _original_ jurisdiction, which is rare; and by this the whole original jurisdiction of the Peers, and the whole law and usage of Parliament, at least in their virtue and spirit, may be considerably impaired. * * * * * After having thus submitted to the House the general tenor of the proceedings in this trial, your Committee will, with all convenient speed, lay before the House the proceedings on each head of evidence separately which has been rejected; and this they hope will put the House more perfectly in possession of the principal causes of the length of this trial, as well as of the injury which Parliamentary justice may, in their opinion, suffer from those proceedings. FOOTNOTES: [1] 4 Inst. p. 4. [2] Rol. Parl. Vol. III. p. 244, Sec. 7. [3] 4 Inst. p. 15. [4] 16 Ch. I. 1640. [5] Lords' Journals, Vol. IV. p. 133. [6] Id. Vol. XIX. p. 98. [7] Lords' Journals, Vol. XIX. p. 116. [8] Lords' Journals, Vol. XIX. p. 121. [9] Lords' Journals, Vol. XIX. p. 108. [10] State Trials, Vol. V. [11] Statutes at Large, from 12 Ed. I. to 16 and 17 Ch. II. [12] 7 W. III. ch. 3, sect. 12. [13] State Trials, Vol. VI. p. 17. [14] Lords' Journals, Vol. XX. p. 316. [15] Discourse IV. p. 389. [16] Parl. Rolls, Vol. II. p. 57. 4 Ed. III. A.D. 1330. [17] Coke, 4 Inst. p. 3. [18] State Trials, Vol. II. p. 725. A.D. 1678. [19] State Trials, Vol. III. p. 212. [20] State Trials, Vol. V. p. 169. [21] State Trials, Vol. IV. from p. 538 to 552.