This is a species of appeal which raises no question of fact.

The Lords, while sitting judicially on the writ of error, were not competent to examine whether the verdict which pronounced Gates guilty was or was not according to the evidence.

All that they had to consider was whether, the verdict being supposed to be according to the evidence, the judgment was legal.

But it would have been difficult even for a tribunal composed of veteran magistrates, and was almost impossible for an assembly of noblemen who were all strongly biassed on one side or on the other, and among whom there was at that time not a single person whose mind had been disciplined by the study of jurisprudence, to look steadily at the mere point of law, abstracted from the special circumstances of the case.

In the view of one party, a party which even among the Whig peers was probably a minority, the appellant was a man who had rendered inestimable services to the cause of liberty and religion, and who had been requited by long confinement, by degrading exposure, and by torture not to be thought of without a shudder.