For example, how could the payment of a debt ever be
enforced against an unwilling debtor, if he could neither be
"arrested, imprisoned, nor deprived of his freehold," and if the
king could neither "proceed against him, nor send any one against
him, by force or arms" ? Yet Magna Carta as much forbids that
any of these things shall be done against a debtor, as against a
criminal, except according to, or in execution of, " a judgment
of his peers, or the law of the land," a provision which, it
has been shown, gave the jury the free and absolute right to give
or withhold "judgment" according to their consciences,
irrespective of all legislation.
The following provisions, in the Magna Carta of John, illustrate
the custom of referring the most important matters of a civil
nature, even where the king was a party, to the determination of
the peers, or of twelve men, acting by no rules but their own
consciences. These examples at least show that there is nothing
improbable or unnatural in the idea that juries should try all
civil suits according to their own judgments, independently of
all laws of the king.
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