The doctrine so laid down demands that every several circumstance should in itself be conclusive, or at least should afford a violent presumption:  it must, we were told, without question, be material to the charge depending.  But, as we conceive, its materiality, more or less, is not in the first instance to be established.  To make it admissible, it is enough to give proof, or to raise a legal inference, of its connection both with the charge depending and the person of the party charged, where it does not appear on the face of the evidence offered.  Besides, by this new doctrine, the materiality required to be shown must be decided from a consideration, not of the whole circumstance, but in truth of one half of the circumstance,—­of a demeanor unconnected with and unexplained by that on which it arose, though the connection between the demeanor of the party and the paper is that which must be shown to be material.  Your Committee, after all they have heard, is yet to learn how the full force and effect of any demeanor, as evidence of guilt or innocence, can be known, unless it be also fully known to what that demeanor applied,—­unless, when a person did or said anything, it be known, not generally and abstractedly, that a paper was read to him, but particularly and specifically what were the contents of that paper:  whether they were matters lightly or weightily alleged,—­within the power of the party accused to have confuted on the spot, if false,—­or such as, though he might have denied, he could not instantly have disproved.  The doctrine appeared and still appears to your Committee to be totally abhorrent from the genius of circumstantial evidence, and mischievously subversive of its use.  We did, however, offer that extraneous proof which was demanded of us; but it was refused, as well as the office document.

Your Committee thought themselves the more bound to contend for every mode of evidence to the intention, because in many of the cases the gross fact was admitted, and the prisoner and his counsel set up pretences of public necessity and public service for his justification.  No way lay open for rebutting this justification, but by bringing out all the circumstances attendant on the transaction.

ORDER AND TIME OF PRODUCING EVIDENCE.

Your Committee found great impediment in the production of evidence, not only on account of the general doctrines supposed to exist concerning its inadmissibility, drawn from its own alleged natural incompetency, or from its inapplicability under the pleading of the impeachment of this House, but also from the mode of proceeding in bringing it forward.  Here evidence which we thought necessary to the elucidation of the cause was not suffered, upon the supposed rules of examination in chief and cross-examination, and on supposed rules forming a distinction between evidence originally produced on the charge and evidence offered on the reply.