adjournment?” The Lord High Steward doubted of his power to adjourn the Court.  The case was evidently new, and his Grace proposed to have the opinion of the Judges upon it.  The Judges in consequence offering to withdraw into the Exchequer Chamber, Lord Falconberg “insisted that the question concerned the privilege of the Peerage only, and conceived that the Judges are not concerned to make any determination in that matter; and being such a point of privilege, certainly the inferior courts have no right to determine it.”  It was insisted, therefore, that the Lords triers should retire with the Judges.  The Lord High Steward thought differently, and opposed this motion; but finding the other opinion generally prevalent, he gave way, and the Lords triers retired, taking the Judges to their consult.  When the Judges returned, they delivered their opinion in open court.  Lord Chief-Justice Herbert spoke for himself and the rest of the Judges.  After observing on the novelty of the case, with a temperate and becoming reserve with regard to the rights of Parliaments, he marked out the limits of the office of the inferior Judges on such occasions, and declared,—­“All that we, the Judges, can do is to acquaint your Grace and the noble Lords what the law is in the inferior courts in cases of the like nature, and the reason of the law in those points, and then leave the jurisdiction of the court to its proper judgment.”  The Chief-Justice concluded his statement of the usage below, and his observations on the difference of the cases of a peer tried in full Parliament and by a special commission, in this manner:—­“Upon the whole matter, my Lords, whether the Peers being judges in the one and not in the other instance alters the case, or whether the reason of the law in inferior courts why the jury are not permitted to separate until they have discharged themselves of their verdict may have any influence on this case, where that reason seems to fail, the prisoner being to be tried by men of unquestionable honor, we cannot presume so far as to make any determination, in a case which is both new to us and of great consequence in itself; but think it the proper way for us, having laid matters as we conceive them before your Grace and my Lords, to submit the jurisdiction of your own court to your own determination.”

It appears to your Committee, that the Lords, who stood against submitting the course of their high court to the inferior Judges, and that the Judges, who, with a legal and constitutional discretion, declined giving any opinion in this matter, acted as became them; and your Committee sees no reason why the Peers at this day should be less attentive to the rights of their court with regard to an exclusive judgment on their own proceedings or to the rights of the Commons acting as accusers for the whole commons of Great Britain in that court, or why the Judges should be less reserved in deciding upon any of these points of high Parliamentary privilege, than the Judges of that and the preceding periods.  This present case is a proceeding in full Parliament, and not like the case under the commission in the time of James II., and still more evidently out of the province of Judges in the inferior courts.