This charter, the inestimable monument of English freedom, so long
the boast and glory of this nation, would have been at once an
instrument of our servitude, and a monument of our folly, if this
principle were true. The thirty four confirmations would have been
only so many repetitions of their absurdity, so many new links in
the chain, and so many invalidations of their right.
You cannot open your statute book without seeing positive provisions
relative to every right of the subject. This business of juries is
the subject of not fewer than a dozen. To suppose that juries are
something innate in the Constitution of Great Britain, that they
have jumped, like Minerva, out of the head of Jove in complete
armour, is a weak fancy, supported neither by precedent nor by
reason. Whatever is most ancient and venerable in our Constitution,
royal prerogative, privileges of parliament, rights of elections,
authority of courts, juries, must have been modelled according to
the occasion. I spare your patience, and I pay a compliment to your
understanding, in not attempting to prove that anything so elaborate
and artificial as a jury was not the work of chance, but a matter of
institution, brought to its present state by the joint efforts of
legislative authority and juridical prudence.
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