cautious in giving their opinions upon matters concerning Parliament, and particularly on the privileges of the House of Commons, was laudable in the example, and ought to be followed:  particularly the principles upon which the Judges declined to give their opinions in the year 1614.  It appears by the Journals of the Lords, that a question concerning the law relative to impositions having been put to the Judges, the proceeding was as follows.  “Whether the Lords the Judges shall be heard deliver their opinion touching the point of impositions, before further consideration be had of answer to be returned to the lower House concerning the message from them lately received.  Whereupon the number of the Lords requiring to hear the Judges’ opinions by saying ‘Content’ exceeding the others which said ‘Non Content,’ the Lords the Judges, so desiring, were permitted to withdraw themselves into the Lord Chancellor’s private rooms, where having remained awhile and advised together, they returned into the House, and, having taken their places, and standing discovered, did, by the mouth of the Lord Chief-Justice of the King’s Bench, humbly desire to be forborne at this time, in this place, to deliver any opinion in this case, for many weighty and important reasons, which his Lordship delivered with great gravity and eloquence; concluding that himself and his brethren are upon particulars in judicial course to speak and judge between the King’s Majesty and his people, and likewise between his Highness’s subjects, and in no case to be disputants on any side.”

Your Committee do not find anything which, through inadvertence or design, had a tendency to subject the law and course of Parliament to the opinions of the Judges of the inferior courts, from that period until the 1st of James II.  The trial of Lord Delamere for high treason was had by special commission before the Lord High Steward:  it was before the act which directs that all peers should be summoned to such trials.  This was not a trial in full Parliament, in which case it was then contended for that the Lord High Steward was the judge of the law, presiding in the Court, but had no vote in the verdict, and that the Lords were triers only, and had no vote in the judgment of law.  This was looked on as the course, where the trial was not in full Parliament, in which latter case there was no doubt but that the Lord High Steward made a part of the body of the triers, and that the whole House was the judge.[32] In this cause, after the evidence for the Crown had been closed, the prisoner prayed the Court to adjourn.  The Lord High Steward doubted his power to take that step in that stage of the trial; and the question was, “Whether, the trial not being in full Parliament, when the prisoner is upon his trial, and evidence for the King is given, the Lords being (as it may be termed) charged with the prisoner, the Peers may separate for a time, which is the consequence of an