ionary powers
create a petty tyranny in a set of standing commissioners; and as the
disuse of the trial by jury may tend to estrange the minds of the
people from that valuable prerogative of Englishmen, which has
already been more than sufficiently excluded in many instances. _How
much rather is it to be wished that the proceedings in the county and
hundred courts could be again revived_, without burdening the
freeholders with too frequent and tedious attendances; and at the
same time removing the delays that have insensibly crept into their
proceedings, and the power that either party has of transferring at
pleasure their suits to the courts at Westminster! _And we may, with
satisfaction, observe, that this experiment has been actually tried,
and has succeeded in the populous county of Middlesex_, which might
serve as an example for others. For by statute 23 Geo. II., ch. 33,
it is enacted:

1. That a special county court shall be held at least once in a
month, in every hundred of the county of Middlesex, _by the county
clerk_.

2. _That twelve freeholders of that hundred, qualified to serve on
juries, and struck by the sheriff, shall be summoned to appear at
such court by rotation_; so as none shall be summoned oftener than
once a year.

3. That in all causes not exceeding the value of forty shillings,
_the county clerk and twelve suitors (jurors) shall proceed in a
summary way_, examining the parties and witnesses on oath, without
the formal process anciently used; _and shall make such order therein
as they shall judge agreeable to conscience_."--_3 Blackstone_,
81-83.

What are these but courts of conscience? And yet Blackstone tells us
they are a _revival of the ancient hundred and county courts_. And what
does this fact prove, but that the ancient common law courts, in which
juries sat, were mere courts of conscience?

It is perfectly evident that in all these courts the jurors were the
judges, and determined all questions of law for themselves; because the
only alternative to that supposition is, _that the jurors took their law
from sheriffs, bailiffs, and stewards_, of which there is not the least
evidence in history, nor the least probability in reason. It is evident,
also, that they judged independently of the laws of the king, for the
reasons before given, viz., that the authority of the king was held in
very little esteem