fspring of an act of Parliament, unless it is a shame for our laws
to be the results of our legislature. Juries, which sensitively shrink
from the rude touch of Parliamentary remedy, have been the subject of
not fewer than, I think, forty-three acts of Parliament, in which they
have been changed with all the authority of a creator over its creature,
from Magna Charta to the great alterations which were made in the 29th
of George II.

To talk of this matter in any other way is to turn a rational principle
into an idle and vulgar superstition,--like the antiquary, Dr. Woodward,
who trembled to have his shield scoured, for fear it should be
discovered to be no better than an old pot-lid. This species of
tenderness to a jury puts me in mind of a gentleman of good condition,
who had been reduced to great poverty and distress: application was made
to some rich fellows in his neighborhood to give him some assistance;
but they begged to be excused, for fear of affronting a person of his
high birth; and so the poor gentleman was left to starve, out of pure
respect to the antiquity of his family. From this principle has arisen
an opinion, that I find current amongst gentlemen, that this distemper
ought to be left to cure itself:--that the judges, having been well
exposed, and something terrified on account of these clamors, will
entirely change, if not very much relax from their rigor;--if the
present race should not change, that the chances of succession may put
other more constitutional judges in their place;--lastly, if neither
should happen, yet that the spirit of an English jury will always be
sufficient for the vindication of its own rights, and will not suffer
itself to be overborne by the bench. I confess that I totally dissent
from all these opinions. These suppositions become the strongest
reasons with me to evince the necessity of some clear and positive
settlement of this question of contested jurisdiction. If judges are so
full of levity, so full of timidity, if they are influenced by such mean
and unworthy passions that a popular clamor is sufficient to shake the
resolution they build upon the solid basis of a legal principle, I would
endeavor to fix that mercury by a positive law. If to please an
administration the judges can go one way to-day, and to please the crowd
they can go another to-morrow, if they will oscillate backward and
forward between power and popularity, it is high time to fix the law in
such a man