The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. | Page 3

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.
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. As 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, ETC., TO THE COURT OF
PARLIAMENT.
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 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 to the nature and circumstances of the case
before them, and no otherwise.[1]
JURISDICTION OF THE LORDS.
Your Committee finds, that, in all impeachments of the Commons of
Great Britain for high crimes and misdemeanors 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 inferior 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 II.
Upon an appeal in Parliament then depending against certain great
persons, peers and commoners, the said appeal was referred to the
Justices, and other learned persons of the law. "At which time," it is
said in the record, that "the Justices