ch injustice may, and certainly will, be done,
systematically and continually, _for the want of these precautions_--that
is, while the law is authoritatively made and expounded by legislators and
judges. On the other hand, we have no such evidence of how much justice
may fail to be done, _by reason of these precautions_--that is, by reason
of the law being left to the judgments and consciences of jurors. We can
determine the former point--that is, how much positive injustice is done
under the first of these two systems--because the system is in full
operation; but we cannot determine how much justice would fail to be
done under the latter system, because we have, in modern times, had no
experience of the use of the precautions themselves. In ancient times,
when these precautions were _nominally_ in force, such was the tyranny of
kings, and such the poverty, ignorance, and the inability of concert and
resistance, on the part of the people, that the system had no full or fair
operation. It, nevertheless, under all these disadvantages, impressed
itself upon the understandings, and imbedded itself in the hearts, of the
people, so as no other system of civil liberty has ever done.

But this view of the two systems compares only the injustice done, and
the justice omitted to be done, in the individual cases adjudged,
without looking beyond them. And some persons might, on first thought,
argue that, if justice failed of being done under the one system,
oftener than positive injustice were done under the other, the balance
was in favor of the latter system. But such a weighing of the two
systems against each other gives no true idea of their comparative
merits or demerits; for, possibly, in this view alone, the balance would
not be very great in favor of either. To compare, or rather to contrast,
the two, we must consider that, under the jury system, the failures to
do justice would be only rare and exceptional cases; and would be owing
either to the intrinsic difficulty of the questions, or to the fact that
the parties had transacted their business in a manner unintelligible to
the jury, and the effects would be confined to the individual or
individuals interested in the particular suits. No permanent law would
be established thereby destructive of the rights of the people in other
like cases. And the people at large would continue to enjoy all their
natural rights as before. But under the other system, whenever an unjust
law i