."]

[Footnote 28: Coke attempts to show that there is a distinction between
amercements and fines--admitting that amercements must be fixed by one's
peers, but claiming that fines may be fixed by the government. (_2
Inst._ 27, _8 Coke's Reports_ 38.) But there seems to have been no
ground whatever for supposing that any such distinction existed at the
time of Magna Carta. If there were any such distinction in the time of
Coke, it had doubtless grown up within the four centuries that had
elapsed since Magna Carta, and is to be set down as one of the
numberless inventions of government for getting rid of the restraints of
Magna Carta, and for taking men out of the protection of their peers,
and subjecting them to such punishments as the government chooses to
inflict.

The first statute of Westminster, passed sixty years after Magna Carta,
treats the fine and amercement as synonymous, as follows:

"Forasmuch as _the common fine and amercement_ of the whole county in
Eyre of the justices for false judgments, or for other trespass, is
unjustly assessed by sheriffs and baretors in the shires, * * it is
provided, and the king wills, that from henceforth such sums shall be
assessed before the justices in Eyre, afore their departure, _by the
oath of knights and other honest men_," &c.--_3 Edward I., Ch._ 18.
(1275.)

And in many other statutes passed after Magna Carta, the terms _fine_
and _amercement_ seem to be used indifferently, in prescribing the
punishment for offences. As late as 1461, (246 years after Magna Carta,)
the statute _1 Edward IV., Ch._ 2, speaks of "_fines, ransoms, and
amerciaments_" as being levied upon criminals, as if they were the
common punishments of offences.

_St._ 2 and 3 _Philip and Mary, Ch._ 8, uses the terms, "_fines,
forfeitures, and amerciaments_" five times. (1555.)

_St. 5 Elizabeth, Ch._ 13, _Sec._ 10, uses the terms "_fines,
forfeitures, and amerciaments_."

That amercements were fines, or pecuniary punishments, inflicted for
offences, is proved by the following statutes, (all supposed to have
been passed within one hundred and fifteen years after Magna Carta,)
which speak of amercements as a species of "_judgment_," or punishment,
and as being inflicted for the same offences as other "judgments."

Thus one statute declares that a baker, for default in the weight of his
bread, "ought to be _amerced_, or suffer the _judgment_ of the pillory;"
and that a brewer, for "selling ale co