m.

Magna Carta does not provide that the judgments of the peers _shall be
executed_; but only that _no other than their judgments_ shall ever be
executed, _so far as to take a party's goods, rights, or person,
thereon_.

A judgment of the peers may be reviewed, and invalidated, and a new
trial granted. So that practically a jury has no absolute power to take
a party's goods, rights, or person. They have only an absolute veto upon
their being taken by the government. The government is not bound to do
everything that a jury may adjudge. It is only prohibited from doing
anything--(that is, from taking a party's goods, rights, or
person)--unless a jury have first adjudged it to be done.

But it will, perhaps, be said, that if an erroneous judgment of one jury
should be reaffirmed by another, on a new trial, it must _then_ be
executed. But Magna Carta does not command even this--although it might,
perhaps, have been reasonably safe for it to have done so--for if two
juries unanimously affirm the same thing, after all the light and aid
that judges and lawyers can afford them, that fact probably furnishes as
strong a presumption in favor of the correctness of their opinion, as
can ordinarily be obtained in favor of a judgment, by any measures of a
practical character for the administration of justice. Still, there is
nothing in Magna Carta that _compels_ the execution of even a second
judgment of a jury. The only injunction of Magna Carta upon the
government, as to what it _shall do_, on this point, is that it shall
"do justice and right," without sale, denial, or delay. But this leaves
the government all power of determining what is justice and right,
except that it shall not consider anything as justice and right--so far
as to carry it into execution against the goods, rights, or person of a
party--unless it be something which a jury have sanctioned.

If the government had no alternative but to execute all judgments of a
jury indiscriminately, the power of juries would unquestionably be
dangerous; for there is no doubt that they may sometimes give hasty and
erroneous judgments. But when it is considered that their judgments can
be reviewed, and new trials granted, this danger is, for all practical
purposes, obviated.

If it be said that juries may _successively_ give erroneous judgments,
and that new trials cannot be granted indefinitely, the answer is, that
so far as Magna Carta is concerned, there is nothing to preve