s enacted by the legislature, and the judge imposes it upon the
jury as authoritative, and they give a judgment in accordance therewith,
the authority of the law is thereby established, and the whole people
are thus brought under the yoke of that law; because they then
understand that the law will be enforced against them in future, if they
presume to exercise their rights, or refuse to comply with the
exactions of the law. In this manner all unjust laws are established,
and made operative against the rights of the people.

The difference, then, between the two systems is this: Under the one
system, a jury, at distant intervals, would (not enforce any positive
injustice, but only) fail of enforcing justice, in a dark and difficult
case, or in consequence of the parties not having transacted their
business in a manner intelligible to a jury; and the plaintiff would
thus fail of obtaining what was rightfully due him. And there the matter
would end, _for evil_, though not for good; for thenceforth parties,
warned of the danger of losing their rights, would be careful to
transact their business in a more clear and intelligible manner. Under
the other system--the system of legislative and judicial
authority--positive injustice is not only done in every suit arising
under unjust laws,--that is, men's property, liberty, or lives are not
only unjustly taken on those particular judgments,--but the rights of
the whole people are struck down by the authority of the laws thus
enforced, and a wide-sweeping tyranny at once put in operation.

But there is another ample and conclusive answer to the argument that
justice would often fail to be done, if jurors were allowed to be
governed by their own consciences, instead of the direction of the
justices, in matters of law. That answer is this:

Legitimate government can be formed only by the voluntary association of
all who contribute to its support. As a voluntary association, it can
have for its objects only those things in which the members of the
association are _all agreed_. If, therefore, there be any _justice_, in
regard to which all the parties to the government _are not agreed_, the
objects of the association do not extend to it.[75]

If any of the members wish more than this,--if they claim to have
acquired a more extended knowledge of justice than is common to all, and
wish to have their pretended discoveries carried into effect, in
reference to themselves,--they must eithe