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 adjournments, 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.

Days. 
In the year 1788, the Court sat 35
1789, 17
1790, 14
1791, 5
1792, 22
1793, 22
1794, to the 1st of March, inclusive 3
——­
Total 118

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, particularly the adjournments on account of the Circuit, 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 consequence of a complaint of the prisoner against one of your Managers, which took up a space of ten days; that two days’ adjournments 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 one hundred and eighteen days employed in actual sitting, the distribution of the business was in the manner following.

There were spent,—­

Days
In reading the articles of impeachment, and the
defendant’s answer, and in debate on the mode
of proceeding 3

Opening speeches, and summing up by the Managers 19

Documentary and oral evidence by the Managers 51