ived men of their property "_without legal judgment of their
peers_," if his laws had been binding upon the peers; because he could
then have made the same spoliations as well with the judgment of the
peers as without it. Taking the judgment of the peers in the matter,
would have been only a ridiculous and useless formality, if they were to
exercise no discretion or conscience of their own, independently of the
laws of the king.

It may here be mentioned, in passing, that the same would be true in
criminal matters, if the king's laws were obligatory upon juries.

As an illustration of what tyranny the kings would sometimes practise,
Hume says:

"It appears from the Great Charter itself, that not only John, a
tyrannical prince, and Richard, a violent one, but their father
Henry, under whose reign the prevalence of gross abuses is the least
to be suspected, were accustomed, from their sole authority, without
process of law, to imprison, banish, and attaint the freemen of their
kingdom."--_Hume, Appendix_ 2.

The provision, also, in the 64th chapter of Magna Carta, that "all
unjust and illegal fines, and all amercements, _imposed unjustly, and
contrary to the Law of the Land, shall be entirely forgiven_," &c.; and
the provision, in chapter 61, that the king "will cause full justice to
be administered" in regard to "all those things, of which any person
has, without legal judgment of his peers, been dispossessed or deprived,
either by King Henry, our father, or our brother, King Richard,"
indicate the tyrannical practices that prevailed.

We are told also that John himself "had dispossessed several great
men without any judgment of their peers, condemned others to cruel
deaths, * * insomuch that his tyrannical will stood instead of a
law."--_Echard's History of England_, 106.

Now all these things were very unnecessary and foolish, if his laws were
binding upon juries; because, in that case, he could have procured the
conviction of these men in a legal manner, and thus have saved the
necessity of such usurpation. In short, if the laws of the king had been
binding upon juries, there is no robbery, vengeance, or oppression,
which he could not have accomplished through the judgments of juries.
This consideration is sufficient, of itself, to prove that the laws of
the king were of no authority over a jury, in either civil or criminal
cases, unless the juries regarded the laws as just in thems