This is destroying the vital principle of the
trial by jury itself, which is that the legislation of the government
shall be subjected to the judgment of a tribunal, taken
indiscriminately from the whole people, without any choice by the
government, and over which the government can exercise no
control. If the government can select the jurors, it will, of course,
select those whom it supposes will be favorable to its enactments.
And an exclusion of any of the freemen from eligibility is a
selection of those not excluded.
It will be seen, from the statutes cited, that the most absolute
authority over the jury box that is, over the right of the
people to sit in juries has been usurped by the government; that
the qualifications of jurors have been repeatedly changed, and
made to vary from a freehold of ten shillings yearly, to one of
"twenty pounds by the year at least above reprises." They have
also been made different, in the counties of Southampton, Surrey,
and Sussex, from what they were in the other counties; different
in Wales from what they were in England; and different in the city
of London, and in the county of Middlesex, from what they were in
any other part of the kingdom.
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