The Lower House rejected the amendment; the Upper House persisted; a free conference was held; and the question was argued with great force and ingenuity on both sides.
The reasons in favour of the amendment are obvious, and indeed at first sight seem unanswerable.

It was surely difficult to defend a system under which the Sovereign nominated a conclave of his own creatures to decide the fate of men whom he regarded as his mortal enemies.

And could any thing be more absurd than that a nobleman accused of high treason should be entitled to be tried by the whole body of his peers if his indictment happened to be brought into the House of Lords the minute before a prorogation, but that, if the indictment arrived a minute after the prorogation, he should be at the mercy of a small junto named by the very authority which prosecuted him?
That any thing could have been said on the other side seems strange; but those who managed the conference for the Commons were not ordinary men, and seem on this occasion to have put forth all their powers.

Conspicuous among them was Charles Montague, who was rapidly attaining a foremost rank among the orators of that age.
To him the lead seems on this occasion to have been left; and to his pen we owe an account of the discussion, which gives a very high notion of his talents for debate.

"We have framed"-- such was in substance his reasoning,--"we have framed a law which has in it nothing exclusive, a law which will be a blessing to every class, from the highest to the lowest.