Mr. Walpole said,—­“Those learned gentlemen [Lord Wintoun’s counsel] seem to forget in what court they are.  They have taken up so much of your Lordships’ time in quoting of authorities, and using arguments to show your Lordships what would quash an indictment in the courts below, that they seemed to forget they are now in a Court of Parliament, and on an impeachment of the Commons of Great Britain.  For, should the Commons admit all that they have offered, it will not follow that the impeachment of the Commons is insufficient; and I must observe to your Lordships, that neither of the learned gentlemen have offered to produce one instance relative to an impeachment.  I mean to show that the sufficiency of an impeachment was never called in question for the generality of the charge, or that any instance of that nature was offered at before.  The Commons don’t conceive, that, if this exception would quash an indictment, it would therefore make the impeachment insufficient.  I hope it never will be allowed here as a reason, that what quashes an indictment in the courts below will make insufficient an impeachment brought by the Commons of Great Britain.”

The Attorney-General supported Mr. Walpole in affirmance of this principle.  He said,—­“I would follow the steps of the learned gentleman who spoke before me, and I think he has given a good answer to these objections.  I would take notice that we are upon an impeachment, not upon an indictment.  The courts below have set forms to themselves, which have prevailed for a long course of time, and thereby are become the forms by which those courts are to govern themselves; but it never was thought that the forms of those courts had any influence on the proceedings of Parliament.  In Richard II.’s time, it is said in the records of Parliament, that proceedings in Parliament are not to be governed by the forms of Westminster Hall.  We are in the case of an impeachment, and in the Court of Parliament.  Your Lordships have already given judgment against six upon this impeachment, and it is warranted by the precedents in Parliament; therefore we insist that the articles are good in substance.”

Mr. Cowper.—­“They [the counsel] cannot but know that the usages of Parliaments are part of the laws of the land, although they differ in many instances from the Common Law, as practised in the inferior courts, in point of form.  My Lords, if the Commons, in preparing articles of impeachment, should govern themselves by precedents of indictments, in my humble opinion they would depart from the ancient, nay, the constant, usage and practice of Parliament.  It is well known that the form of an impeachment has very little resemblance to that of an indictment; and I believe the Commons will endeavor to preserve the difference, by adhering to their own precedents.”