If the judges
differ in their complexions, much more will a jury. A timid jury
will give way to an awful judge delivering oracularly the law, and
charging them on their oaths, and putting it home to their
consciences, to beware of judging where the law had given them no
competence. We know that they will do so, they have done so in a
hundred instances; a respectable member of your own house, no vulgar
man, tells you that on the authority of a judge he found a man
guilty, in whom, at the same time, he could find no guilt. But
supposing them full of knowledge and full of manly confidence in
themselves, how will their knowledge, or their confidence, inform or
inspirit others? They give no reason for their verdict, they can
but condemn or acquit; and no man can tell the motives on which they
have acquitted or condemned. So that this hope of the power of
juries to assert their own jurisdiction must be a principle blind,
as being without reason, and as changeable as the complexion of men
and the temper of the times.
But, after all, is it fit that this dishonourable contention between
the court and juries should subsist any longer? On what principle
is it that a jury refuses to be directed by the court as to his
competence? Whether a libel or no libel be a question of law or of
fact may be doubted, but a question of jurisdiction and competence
is certainly a question of law; on this the court ought undoubtedly
to judge, and to judge solely and exclusively.
Pages:
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191