ere instructed by Judge Peters as follows:

It is the duty of the court to declare the law; though both
facts and law, which, I fear, are too plain to admit a
reasonable doubt, are subject to your consideration.
(Wharton's State Trials, 587.)

And, in the second trial of Fries, Judge Chase instructed the
jury as follows:

It is the duty of the court in this case, and in all
criminal cases, to state to the jury their opinion of the
law arising on the facts; but the jury are to decide in the
present, and in all criminal cases, both the law and the
facts, on their consideration of the whole case. (2 Chase's
Trial, Appendix 1.)

In the answer of Judge Chase to articles of impeachment against
him, he says:

He well knows that it is the right of juries, in criminal
cases, to give a general verdict of acquittal, which can not
be set aside on account of its being contrary to law, and
that hence results the power of juries to decide on the law
as well as on the facts in all criminal cases. This power he
holds to be a sacred part of our legal privileges, which he
has never attempted, and never will attempt to abridge or
obstruct. (1 Chase's Trial, pp. 5, 34, 35.)

In Georgia _vs._ Brailsford, 3 Dallas, 4, in 1794, Chief-Justice
Jay charged the jury as follows:

It may not be amiss here, gentlemen, to remind you of the
good old rule, that on questions of fact it is the province
of the jury, on questions of law it is the province of the
court, to decide. But it must be observed that by the same
law which recognizes this reasonable distribution of
jurisdiction, you have, nevertheless, a right to take upon
yourselves to judge of both, and to determine the law as
well as the fact in controversy. On this, and on every other
occasion, however, we have no doubt you will pay that
respect which is due to the opinion of the court; for as, on
the one hand, it is presumed that juries are the best judges
of facts, it is, on the other hand, presumable that the
court are the best judges of law. But still both objects are
lawfully within your power of decision.

This charge was delivered