and that they are
bound implicitly in all cases to receive the law from the
court. The law must, however, have intended, in granting
this power to a jury, to grant them a lawful and rightful
power, or it would have provided a remedy against the undue
exercise of it. The true criterion of a legal power is its
capacity to produce a definitive effect, liable to neither
censure nor review. And the verdict of not guilty in a
criminal case is, in every respect, absolute and final. The
jury are not liable to punishment, nor the verdict to
control. No attaint lies, nor can a new trial be awarded.
The exercise of this power in the jury has been sanctioned
and upheld in constant activity from the earliest ages. It
was made a question by Bracton (fol. 119, a. b.), who was to
sit in judgment and decide upon points of law on appeals in
capital cases. It could not be the king, he says, for then
he would be both prosecutor and judge; nor his justices, for
they represented him. He thinks, therefore, the _curia_ and
_pares_ were to be judges in all cases of life and limb, or
disherison of heir, where the crown was the prosecutor. And,
indeed, it is probable that in the earliest stages of the
English juridical history the jury, instead of deciding
causes under the direction of the judge, decided all causes
without the assistance of the judge. (Barrington on the
Statutes, 18, 26, 311.)

He then proceeds to review the trial of Lilburn for high treason
in 1549; Bushell's case, Vaughan, 135, and Sir T. Jones, 113;
Algernon Sidney's case, 3 State Trials, 817; Tuchin's case, 5
State Trials, 542, and other cases. Again, he says:

To deny to the jury the right of judging of the intent and
tendency of the act, is to take away the substance, and with
it the value and security of this mode of trial. It is to
transfer the exclusive cognizance of crimes from the jury to
the court, and to give the judge the absolute control of the
press. There is nothing peculiar in the law of libels to
withdraw it from the jurisdiction of the jury. The twelve
judges in their opinion in the House of Lords (April, 1792),
ad