58

HISTOEY 01? ENGLAND.

CHAP.

XIV.

1689 .

power the Commons protest; and they hope that you will nowredeem what you must feel to be an error. Your Lordships in-timate a suspicion that Oates is mad. That a man is mad maybe a very good reason for not punishing him at all. But how itcan be a reason for inflicting on him a punishment which wouldbe illegal even if he were sane, the Commons do not compre-hend. Your Lordships think that you should not be justified incalling a verdict corrupt which has not been legally proved tobe so. Suffer us to remind you that you have two distinct func-tions to perform. You are judges; and you are legislators.AVhen you judge, your duty is strictly to follow the law. Whenyou legislate, you may properly take facts from common fame.You invert this rule. You are lax in the wrong place, andscrupulous in the wrong place. As judges, you break throughthe law for the sake of a supposed convenience. As legislators,you will not admit any fact without such technical proof as it israrely possible for legislators to obtain.”*

This reasoning was not and could not be answered. TheCommons were evidently flushed with their victory in the argu-ment, and proud of the appearance which Somers had made inthe Painted Chamber. They particularly charged him to seethat the report which he had made of the conference v r as ac-curately entered in the Journals. The Lords very wisely ab-stained from inserting in their records an account of a debate inwhich they had been so signally discomfited. But, though con-scious of their fault and ashamed of it, they could not bebrought to do public penance by owning, in the preamble of theAct, that they had been guilty of injustice. The minority was,however, strong. The resolution to adhere w r as carried by only

* Commons’ Journals, Aug. 2. 1689; Dutch Ambassadors Extra-ordinary to the States General,