[THE following Parliamentary Report was elicited by circumstances connected with the proceedings of the Hastings Trial, though in no way affecting the proceedings of the trial itself. It forms a permanently valuable historical document, for the guidance of Parliament in all cases of a similar kind. It is justly considered one of the ablest state-papers ever drawn up. Its title will explain its nature.]

REPORT,

Made on the 30th of April, 1794, from the COMMITTEE of the House of Commons, appointed to inspect the Lords' Journals, in relation to their Proceedings on the Trial of WARREN HASTINGS, Esquire, and to report what they find therein to the House (which Committee were the Managers appointed to make good the Articles of Impeachment against the said WARREN HASTINGS, Esquire); and who were afterwards instructed to report the several Matters which have occurred since the commencement of the said Prosecution, and which have, in their Opinion, contributed to the duration thereof to the present time, with their Observations thereupon.

YOUR Committee has received two powers from the house-The first on the 5th of March 1794, to inspect the Lords' Journals, in relation to their proceedings on the Trial of Warren Hastings, Esquire, and to report what they find therein to the House. The second is an instruction given on the 17th day of the same month of March, to this effect: That your committee do report to this house, the several matters which have occurred since the commencement of the said prosecution, and which have, in their opinion, contributed to the duration thereof to the present time, with their observations thereupon.

Your committee is sensible that the duration of the said trial, and the causes of that duration, as well as the matters which have therein occurred, do well merit the attentive consideration of this house; we have therefore endeavoured, with all diligence, to employ the powers that have been granted, and to execute the orders that have been given to us, and to report thereon as speedily as possible, and as fully as the time would admit.

Your committee then proceeded to consider the causes of this duration, with regard to time, as measured by the calendar, and also as measured by the number of days occupied in actual sitting. They find, on examining the duration of the trial, with reference to the number of years which it has lasted, that it has been owing to several prorogations, and to one dissolution of parliament; to discussions which are supposed to have arisen in the house of peers, on the legality of the continuance of impeachments from parliament to parliament; that it has been owing to the number and length of the adjournments of the court; particu

Your committee has considered, first, the mere fact of the duration of the trial, which they find to have commenced on the 13th day of February 1788, and to have continued, by various adjourn-larly the adjournments on account of the circuit, ments, to the said 17th of March.-During that period the sittings of the court have occupied one hundred and eighteen days, or about one-third of a year. The distribution of the sitting days in each year is as follows:

which adjournments were interposed in the middle of the session, and the most proper time for business; that it has been owing to one adjournment, made in cousequence of a complaint of the prisoner against one of your managers, which took up a

space of ten days; that two days adjournments | questions were stated and were decided; the were made on account of the illness of certain of the managers; and, as far as your committee can judge, two sitting days were prevented by the sudden and unexpected dereliction of the defence of the prisoner at the close of the last session, your managers not having been then ready to produce their evidence in reply, nor to make their observations on the evidence produced by the prisoner's counsel; as they expected the whole to have been gone through before they were called on for their reply. In this session, your committee computes that the trial was delayed about a week or ten days. The lords waited for the recovery of the Marquis Cornwallis, the prisoner wishing to avail himself of the testimony of that noble person.

With regard to the 118 days employed in actual sitting, the distribution of the business was in the manner following:-There were spent,

:

The other head, namely, that the trial has occupied 118 days, or nearly one-third of a year :This your committee conceives to have arisen from the following immediate causes: first, The nature and extent of the matter to be tried :-secondly, The general nature and quality of the evidence produced; it was principally documentary evidence, contained in papers of great length, the whole of which was often required to be read, when brought to prove a single short fact; or it was oral evidence, in which must be taken into consideration the number and description of the witnesses examined and cross-examined:-thirdly, and principally, The duration of the trial is to be attributed to objections taken by the prisoner's counsel to the admissibility of several documents and persons, offered as evidence on the part of the prosecution. These objections amounted to sixtytwo: they gave rise to several debates, and to twelve references from the court to the judges. --On the part of the managers, the number of objections was small; the debates upon them were short: there was not upon them any reference to the judges; and the lords did not even retire upon any of them to the chamber of parliament.

This last cause of the number of sitting days, your committee considers as far more important than all the rest. The questions upon the admissibility of evidence; the manner in which these

modes of proceeding; the great uncertainty of the principle upon which evidence in that court is to be admitted or rejected: all these appear to your committee materially to affect the constitution of the house of peers, as a court of judicature, as well as its powers, and the purposes it was intended to answer in the state. The peers have a valuable interest in the conservation of their own lawful privileges: but this interest is not confined to the lords. The commons ought to partake in the advantage of the judicial rights and privileges of that high court. Courts are made for the suitors, and not the suitors for the court. The conservation of all other parts of the law, the whole indeed of the rights and liberties of the subject, ultimately depends upon the preservation of the law of parliament in its original force and authority.

As

Your committee had reason to entertain apprehensions, that certain proceedings in this trial may possibly limit and weaken the means of carrying on any future impeachment of the commons. your committee felt these apprehensions strongly, they thought it their duty to begin with humbly submitting facts and observations, on the proceedings concerning evidence, to the consideration of this house, before they proceed to state the other matters which come within the scope of the directions which they have received.

To enable your committee the better to execute the task imposed upon them, in carrying on the impeachment of this house, and to find some principle on which they were to order and regulate their conduct therein, they found it necessary to look attentively to the jurisdiction of the court in which they were to act for this house, and into its laws and rules of proceeding, as well as into the rights and powers of the house of commons in their impeachments.

RELATION OF THE JUDGES, &c. TO THE
COURT OF PARLIAMENT.

Inst. 4. p. 4.

Upon examining into the course of proceeding in the house of lords, and into the relation which exists between the peers on the one hand, and their attendants and assistants,-the judges of the realm, barons of the exchequer of the coif, the king's learned counsel, and the civilians masters of the chancery, on the other; it appears to your committee, that these judges, and other persons learned in the common and civil laws, are no integrant and necessary part of that court. Their writs of summons are essentially different; and it does not appear that they or any of them have, or of right ought to have, a deliberative voice, either actually or virtually, in the judgments given in the high court of parliament. Their attendance in that court is solely ministerial; and their answers to questions put to them, are not to be regarded as declaratory of the law of parliament, but are

"of our said lord the king, and of their common agreement, it was declared, that in so high a "crime as that which is charged in this appeal, "which touches the person of our lord the king, "and the state of the whole kingdom, perpetrated

merely consultory responses, in order to furnish such matter (to be submitted to the judgment of the peers) as may be useful in reasoning by analogy, so far as the nature of the rules, in the respective courts of the learned persons consulted, shall appear to the House to be applicable" by persons who are peers of the kingdom, along to the nature and circumstance of the case before them, and no otherwise.

JURISDICTION OF THE LORDS.

Your committee finds, That in all impeachments of the commons of Great Britain for high crimes and misdemeanours, before the peers in the high court of parliament, the peers are not triers or jurors only, but by the ancient laws and constitution of this kingdom, known by constant usage, are judges both of law and fact; and we conceive that the lords are bound not to act in such a manner as to give rise to an opinion that they have virtually submitted to a division of their legal powers; or that, putting themselves into the situation of mere triers or jurors, they may suffer the evidence in the cause to be produced or not produced before them, according to the discretion of the judges of the inferior courts.

LAW OF PARLIAMENT.

Your committee finds, that the lords in matter of appeal or impeachment in parliament, are not of right obliged to proceed according to the course or rules of the Roman civil law, or by those of the law or usage of any of the inferiour courts in Westminster hall; but by the law and usage of parliament. And your committee finds, that this has been declared in the most clear and explicit manner, by the house of lords, in the year of our Lord 1387 and 1388, in the 11th year of King Richard the Second.

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"with others, the cause shall not be tried in any "other place but in parliament, nor by any other "law than the law and course of parliament; and "that it belongeth to the lords of parliament, "and to their franchise and liberty by the ancient "custom of the parliament, to be judges in such "cases; and in these cases to judge by the assent "of the king; and thus it shall be done in this case, by the award of parliament: because the "realm of England has not been heretofore, nor "is it the intention of our said lord the king, "and the lords of parliament, that it ever should "be governed by the law civil: and also, it is "their resolution, not to rule or govern so high a cause as this appeal is, which cannot be tried any where but in parliament, as hath been said "before, by the course, process, and order used in any courts or place inferiour, in the same king"dom; which courts and places are not more "than the executors of the ancient laws and cus"toms of the kingdom, and of the ordinances "and establishments of parliament. It was de"termined by the said lords of parliament, by the "assent of our said lord the king, that this appeal was made and pleaded well and suf

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ficiently, and that the process upon it is good. "and effectual, according to the law and course "of parliament, and for such they decree and ad"judge it."

And your committee finds, that toward the close of the same parliament, the same right was again claimed and admitted as the special privilege of the peers, in the following manner:

"In this parliament, all the lords Rol. Parl. Vol. "then present, spiritual as well as II. p. 244. § 7. temporal, claimed as their franchise that the weighty matters moved in this parliament, and "which shall be moved in other parliaments in "future times, touching the peers of the land, "shall be managed, adjudged, and discussed by "the course of parliament, and in no sort by the "law civil, or by the common law of the land, "used in the other lower courts of the kingdom, "which claim, liberty, and franchise, the king graciously allowed and granted to them in full "parliament."

Upon an appeal in parliament then depend-" ing, against certain great persons, peers and commoners, the said appeal was referred to the justices and other learned persons of the law; Rolls Parl. "At which time" (it is said in the reVol. III. p. 236. cord) "that the justices and serjeants, "and others the learned in the law civil, were charged, by order of the king our sovereign "aforesaid, to give their faithful counsel to the "lords of the parliament, concerning the due proceedings in the cause of the appeal aforesaid. Your committee finds, that the commons, hav"The which justices, serjeants, and the learned ing at that time considered the appeal above"in the law of the kingdom, and also the learned mentioned, approved the proceedings in it; and, "in the law civil, have taken the same into de- as far as in them lay, added the sanction of their "liberation; and have answered to the said lords accusation against the persons who were the ob"of parliament, that they had seen and well con-jects of the appeal. They also, immediately "sidered the tenour of the said appeal; and they "say, that the same appeal was neither made nor pleaded according to the order which the one "law or the other requires. Upon which the said "lords of parliament have taken the same into "deliberation and consultation, and by the assent

afterwards, impeached all the judges of the common pleas, the chief baron of the exchequer, and other learned and eminent persons, both peers and commoners; upon the conclusion of which impeachments it was that the second claim was entered. In all the transactions aforesaid, the

commons were acting parties: yet neither then, nor ever since, have they made any objection or protestation that the rule laid down by the lords, in the beginning of the session of 1388, ought not to be applied to the impeachments of commoners as well as peers. In many cases they have claimed the benefit of this rule; and in all cases they have acted, and the peers have determined, upon the same general principles. The peers have always supported the same franchises; nor are there any precedents upon the records of parliament subverting either the general rule or the particular privilege; so far as the same relates either to the course of proceeding or to the rule of law, by which the lords are to judge.

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The trial of Lord Strafforde is one 16 Ch. L. 1640. of the most important æras in the history of parliamentary judicature. In that trial, and in the dispositions made preparatory to it, the process of impeachments was, on great consideration, research, and selection of precedents, brought very nearly to the form which it retains at this day; and great and important parts of parliamentary law were then laid down. The commons at that time made new charges, or amended the old, as they saw occasion. Upon an application from the commons to the lords, that the examinations taken by their lordships, at their request, might be delivered to them, for the purpose of a more exact specification of the charge Your committee observes also, that in the com- they had made, on delivering the message of the missions to the several lords high stewards, who commons, Mr. Pim, amongst other things, said, have been appointed on the trials of peers imas it is entered in the Lords' Journals, Lords' Journ. peached by the commons, the proceedings are di- According to the clause of reserva- Vol. IV. p. 133. rected to be had according to the law and custom" tion in the conclusion of their charge, they (the of the kingdom, and the custom of parliament:"commons) will add to the charges, not to the which words are not to be found in the commis- "matter in respect of comprehension, extent, or sions for trying upon indictments. "kind, but only to reduce them to more particularities, that the earl of Strafforde might answer "with the more clearness and expedition-not "that they are bound by this way of SPECIAL charge; and therefore they have taken care "in their house, upon protestation, that this shall "be no prejudice to bind them from proceeding "in GENERAL in other cases, and that they are not to be ruled by proceedings in other courts, which protestation they have made for "the preservation of the power of parliament; " and they desire that the like care may be had "in your lordships' house." This protestation is entered on the Lords' Journals. Thus careful were the commons that no exactness used by them for a temporary accommodation, should become an example derogatory to the larger rights of parliamentary process.

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"As every court of justice" (says 4 Inst. p. 15. Lord Coke)" hath laws and customs "for its direction, some by the common law, some by the civil and canon law, some by peculiar "laws and customs, &c. So the high court of parliament, suis propriis legibus et consuetudi"nibus subsistit. It is by the Lex et Consuetudo "Parliamenti, that all weighty matters in any parliament moved, concerning the peers of the "realm, or commons in parliament assembled, ought to be determined, adjudged, and discussed by the course of the parliament, and not by the civil law, nor yet by the common laws of this "realm used in more inferiour courts."-And after founding himself on this very precedent of the 11th of Richard II. he adds, "This is the reason "that judges ought not to give any opinion of a "matter of parliament, because it is not to be "decided by the common laws, but secundem legem et consuetudinem parliamenti: and so the "judges in divers parliaments have confessed."

RULE OF PLEADING.

Your committee do not find, that any rules of pleading, as observed in the inferiour courts, have ever obtained in the proceedings of the high court of parliament, in a cause or matter in which the whole procedure has been within their original jurisdiction. Nor does your committee find, that any demurrer or exception, as of false or erroneous pleading, hath been ever admitted to any impeachment in parliament, as not coming within the form of the pleading; and although a reservation or protest is made by the defendant (matter of form, as we conceive)" to the generality, "uncertainty, and insufficiency of the articles of "impeachment;" yet no objections have in fact been ever made in any part of the record; and when verbally they have been made, (until this trial,) they have constantly been overruled.

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At length the question of their Lords' Journ being obliged to conform to any of Vol. XIX. p. 98. the rules below, came to a formal judgment. In the trial of Dr. Sacheverell, March 10th, 1709, the Lord Nottingham "desired their lordships' opinion, whether he might propose a question "to the judges here [in Westminster Hall.] Thereupon the lords being moved to adjourn, adjourned to the house of lords, and on debate [as appears by a note] it was agreed that the "question should be proposed in Westminster "Hall." Accordingly, when the lords returned the same day into the Hall, the question was put by Lord Nottingham, and stated to the judges by the lord chancellor: "Whether by the law of

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England, and constant practice in all prosecu"tions by indictment and information, for crimes "and misdemeanours, by writing or speaking, the particular words supposed to be written or "spoken must not be expressly specified in the "indictment or information?" On this question the judges, seriatim, and in open court, delivered their opinion: the substance of which was, “That "by the laws of England, and the constant prac

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"tice in Westminster Hall, the words ought to "be expressly specified in the indictment or in"formation." Then the lords adjourned, and did not come into the hall until the 20th. In the intermediate time they came to resolutions on the matter of the question put to the judges. Dr. Sacheverell, being found guilty, moved in arrest of judgment upon two points :-The first, which he grounded on the opinion of the judges, and which your committee thinks most to the present purpose, was, "That no entire clause, or sentence, or expression, in either of his sermons or dedications, is particularly set forth in his impeachLords' Journ. ment, which he has already heard Vol. XIX. p. 116. "the judges declare to be necessary "in all cases of indictments or informations." On this head of objection, the lord chancellor, on the 23d of March, agreeably to the resolutions of the lords of the 14th and 16th of March, acquainted Dr. Sacheverell: "That on occasion of "the question before put to the judges in West“minster Hall, and their answer thereto, their lordships had fully debated and considered of "that matter, and had come to the following re"solution: That this house will proceed to the "determination of the impeachment of Dr. Henry Sacheverell, according to the law of the land, "and the law and usage of parliament.' And "afterwards to this resolution: That by the law "and usage of parliament in prosecutions for high crimes and misdemeanours, by writing or speaking, the particular words, supposed to be criminal, are not necessary to be expressly spe"cified in such impeachment.' So that, in their "lordships' opinion, the law and usage of the high "court of parliament being a part of the law of "the land, and that usage not reVol. XIX. p. 121. "quiring that words should be exactly specified in impeachments, the answer of "the judges, which related only to the course of "indictments and informations, does not in the "least affect your case.'

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Lords' Journ.

had any weight, would undoubtedly have made and argued them.

Here, as in the case of the 11th King Richard the Second, the judges declared unanimously, That such an objection would be fatal to such a pleading in any indictment or information: but the lords, as on the former occasion, overruled this objection, and held the article to be good and valid, notwithstanding the report of the judges concerning the mode of proceeding in the courts below.

Your committee finds, that a pro- Lords' Journ. test, with reasons at large, was en- Vol. XIX. p. 106. tered by several lords against this determination of their court. It is always an advantage to those who protest, that their reasons appear upon record; whilst the reasons of the majority who determine the question, do not appear. This would be a disadvantage of such importance, as greatly to impair, if not totally to destroy, the effect of precedent as authority, if the reasons which prevailed were not justly presumed to be more valid than those which have been obliged to give way; the former having governed the final and conclusive decision of a competent court. But your committee, combining the fact of this decision with the early decision just quoted, and with the total absence of any precedent of an objection, before that time or since, allowed to pleading, or what has any relation to the rules and principles of pleading as used in Westminster Hall, has no doubt that the house of lords was governed in the 9th of Anne by the very same principles which it had solemnly declared in the 11th of Richard the Second.

But besides the presumption in favour of the reasons which must be supposed to have produced this solemn judgment of the peers, contrary to the practice of the courts below, as declared by all the judges-it is probable, that the lords were unwilling to take a step, which might admit that any thing in that practice should be received as their rule. It must be observed, however, that On this solemn judgment concerning the law the reasons against the article, alleged in the and usage of parliament, it is to be remarked; protest, were by no means solely bottomed in the First, That the impeachment itself is not to be practice of the courts below, as if the main represumed inartificially drawn. It appears to have liance of the protesters was upon that usage. The been the work of some of the greatest lawyers of protesting minority maintained, that it was not the time, who were perfectly versed in the manner agreeable to several precedents in parliament; of of pleading in the courts below; and would natu- which they cited many in favour of their opinion. rally have imitated their course, if they had not-It appears by the Journals, that the clerks were been justly fearful of setting an example, which might hereafter subject the plainness and simplicity of a parliamentary proceeding to the technical subtilties of the inferiour courts: Secondly, That the question put to the judges, and their answer, were strictly confined to the law and practice below; and that nothing in either had a tendency to their delivering an opinion concerning parliament, its laws, its usages, its course of proceeding, or its powers: Thirdly, That the motion in arrest of judgment, grounded on the opinion of the judges, was made only by Dr. Sacheverell himself, and not by his counsel, men of great skill and learning, who, if they thought the objections

ordered to search for precedents, and a committee of peers was appointed to inspect the said precedents, and to report upon them,-and that they did inspect and report accordingly. But the Report is not entered on the Journals. It is, however, to be presumed that the greater number and the better precedents supported the judgment. Allowing, however, their utmost force to the precedents there cited, they could serve only to prove, that in the case of words (to which alone, and not the case of a written libel, the precedents extended) such a special averment, according to the tenor of the words, had been used; but not that it was necessary, or that ever any plea had