" Hume, Appendix 2.
The provision, also, in the 64th chapter of Magna Carta, that "
all unjust and illegal fines, and all amercements, imposed
unjustly, and contrary to the Law of the Land, shall be entirely
forgiven," &c;.; and the provision, in chapter 61, that the king
"will cause full justice to be administered" in regard to "all
those things, of which any person has, without legal judgment of
his peers, been dispossessed or deprived, either by King Henry,
our father., or our brother, King Richard," indicate the
tyrannical practices that prevailed.
We are told also that John himself "had dispossessed several
great men without any judgment of their peers, condemned others
to cruel deaths, * * insomuch that his tyrannical will stood
instead of a law." Echard's History of England, 106.
Now all these things were very unnecessary and foolish, if his
laws were binding upon juries; because, in that ease, he could
have procured the conviction of these men in a legal manner, and
thus have saved the necessity of such usurpation.
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