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Rh be recollected that from the earliest times the House of Commons had exercised a quasi-judicial power, and that on the second day of every session a Grand Committee on the Courts of Justice was appointed as a matter of course. This committee, in a period when life and limb were not safe from judges holding their offices at the pleasure of the Crown, had been of no little use in protecting civil and religious liberty from arbitrary inroads. The jurisdiction it claimed was extensive, and the journals of the House still record how in 1667 Chief Justice Keeling was summoned to the Bar on the report of this committee, to account for "certain innovations in trials of men for their lives and deaths, and because in some particular cases' restraints had been put upon juries." When the law had secured a permanent tenure to the judges, the committee, though still appointed, ceased to have more than a nominal existence. It was nevertheless open to the Opposition to argue that the same dangers against which the security had been devised were about once more to grow up in even subtler shapes; and for that reason Glyn, before moving on the 6th of December for the appointment of a select committee, moved that the Clerk "should read the entry in the votes of November 14th, ordering that the Grand Committee on the Courts of Justice should sit every Saturday afternoon in the House."

Not having succeeded in getting a committee appointed, the Opposition had to settle what course they would pursue. The supporters of Rockingham announced their intention of introducing an "Enacting" Bill; the friends of Shelburne refused to vote for it, unless it was made declaratory of the existing right of juries to find on the whole case. "My arguments," says Barré, "not being stamped with the name of Rockingham, were disapproved of." "The object of Lord Chatham," writes Burke to Dowdeswell, "is to prevent you doing anything useful." "The bill