That the House may be the more fully enabled to judge of the nature and tendency of thus putting the question, specifically, and on the gross case, your Committee thinks fit here to insert one of those questions, reserving a discussion of its particular merits to another place.  It was stated on the 22d of April, 1790, “On that day the Managers proposed to show that Kelleram fell into great balances with the East India Company, in consequence of his appointment.”  It is so stated in the printed Minutes (p. 1206).  But the real tendency and gist of the proposition is not shown.  However, the question was put, “Whether it be or be not competent to the Managers for the Commons to give evidence upon the charge in the sixth article, to prove that the rent [at?] which the defendant, Warren Hastings, Esquire, let the lands mentioned in the said sixth article of charge to Kelleram fell into arrear and was deficient; and whether, if proof were offered that the rent fell into arrear immediately after the letting, the evidence in that case would be competent?” The Judges answered, on the 27th of the said month, as follows:—­“It is not competent for the Managers for the House of Commons to give evidence upon the charge in the sixth article, to prove that the rent at which the defendant, Warren Hastings, let the lands [mentioned?] in the said sixth article of charge to Kelleram fell into arrear and was deficient.”

The House will observe that on the question two cases of competence were put:  the first, on the competence of Managers for the House of Commons to give the evidence supposed to be offered by them, but which we deny to have been offered in the manner and for the purpose assumed in this question; the second is in a shape apparently more abstracted, and more nearly approaching to Parliamentary regularity,—­on the competence of the evidence itself, in the case of a supposed circumstance being superadded.  The Judges answered only the first, denying flatly the competence of the Managers.  As to the second, the competence of the supposed evidence, they are profoundly silent.  Having given this blow to our competence, about the other question, (which was more within their province,) namely, the competence of evidence on a case hypothetically stated, they give themselves no trouble.  The Lords on that occasion rejected the whole evidence.  On the face of the Judges’ opinion it is a determination on a case, the trial of which was not with them, but it contains no rule or principle of law, to which alone it was their duty to speak.[33]

These essential innovations tend, as your Committee conceives, to make an entire alteration in the constitution and in the purposes of the High Court of Parliament, and even to reverse the ancient relations between the Lords and the Judges.  They tend wholly to take away from the Commons the benefit of making good their case before the proper judges, and submit this high inquest to the inferior courts.