that, at that day, the people probably had sense enough to see, (what
we, at this day, have not sense enough to see, although we have the
evidence of it every day before our eyes,) that those judges, being
dependent upon the legislative power, (the king,) being appointed by it,
paid by it, and removable by it at pleasure, would be mere tools of that
power, and would hold all its legislation obligatory, whether it were
just or unjust. This was one reason, doubtless, why Magna Carta made
juries, in civil suits, paramount to all instructions of the king's
judges. The reason was precisely the same as that for making them
paramount to all instructions of judges in criminal suits, viz., that
the people did not choose to subject their rights of property, and all
other rights involved in civil suits, to the operation of such laws as
the king might please to enact. It was seen that to allow the king's
judges to dictate the law to the jury would be equivalent to making the
legislation of the king imperative upon the jury.

Another reason why the people did not wish juries, in civil suits, to
take their law from the king's judges, doubtless was, that, knowing the
dependence of the judges upon the king, and knowing that the king would,
of course, tolerate no judges who were not subservient to his will, they
necessarily inferred that the king's judges would be as corrupt, in the
administration of justice, as was the king himself, or as he wished them
to be. And how corrupt that was, may be inferred from the following
historical facts.

Hume says:

"It appears that the ancient kings of England put themselves entirely
upon the footing of the barbarous Eastern princes, whom no man must
approach without a present, who sell all their good offices, and who
intrude themselves into every business that they may have a pretence
for extorting money. Even justice was avowedly bought and sold; the
king's court itself, though the supreme judicature of the kingdom,
was open to none that brought not presents to the king; the bribes
given for expedition, delay, suspension, and doubtless for the
perversion of justice, were entered in the public registers of the
royal revenue, and remain as monuments of the perpetual iniquity and
tyranny of the times. The barons of the exchequer, for instance, the
first nobility of the kingdom, were not ashamed to insert, as an
article in their records, that the county of Norfo