The bounds set to the power of the government, by the trial by jury, as
will hereafter be shown, are these--that the government shall never
touch the property, person, or natural or civil rights of an individual,
against his consent, (except for the purpose of bringing them before a
jury for trial,) unless in pursuance and _execution_ of a judgment, or
decree, rendered by a jury in each individual case, upon such evidence,
and such law, as are satisfactory to their own understandings and
consciences, irrespective of all legislation of the government.

[Footnote 1: To show that this supposition is not an extravagant one, it
may be mentioned that courts have repeatedly questioned jurors to
ascertain whether they were prejudiced _against the government_--that
is, whether they were in favor of, or opposed to, such laws of the
government as were to be put in issue in the then pending trial. This
was done (in 1851) in the United States District Court for the District
of Massachusetts, by Peleg Sprague, the United States district judge, in
empanelling three several juries for the trials of Scott, Hayden, and
Morris, charged with having aided in the rescue of a fugitive slave from
the custody of the United States deputy marshal. This judge caused the
following question to be propounded to all the jurors separately; and
those who answered unfavorably for the purposes of the government, were
excluded from the panel.

"Do you hold any opinions upon the subject of the Fugitive Slave Law,
so called, which will induce you to refuse to convict a person
indicted under it, if the facts set forth in the indictment, _and
constituting the offence_, are proved against him, and the court
direct you that the law is constitutional?"

The reason of this question was, that "the Fugitive Slave Law, so
called," was so obnoxious to a large portion of the people, as to render
a conviction under it hopeless, if the jurors were taken
indiscriminately from among the people.

A similar question was soon afterwards propounded to the persons drawn
as jurors in the United States _Circuit_ Court for the District of
Massachusetts, by Benjamin R. Curtis one of the Justices of the Supreme
Court of the United States, in empanelling a jury for the trial of the
aforesaid Morris on the charge before mentioned; and those who did not
answer the question favorably for the government were again excluded
from the panel.

It has also been an habitual