which is
that the legislation of the government shall be subjected to the
judgment of a tribunal, taken indiscriminately from the whole people,
without any choice by the government, and over which the government can
exercise no control. If the government can select the jurors, it will,
of course, select those whom it supposes will be favorable to its
enactments. And an exclusion of _any_ of the freemen from eligibility is
a _selection_ of those not excluded.

It will be seen, from the statutes cited, that the most absolute
authority over the jury box--that is, over the right of the people to
sit in juries--has been usurped by the government; that the
qualifications of jurors have been repeatedly changed, and made to vary
from a freehold of _ten shillings yearly_, to one of "_twenty pounds by
the year at least above reprises_." They have also been made different,
in the counties of Southampton, Surrey, and Sussex, from what they were
in the other counties; different in Wales from what they were in
England; and different in the city of London, and in the county of
Middlesex, from what they were in any other part of the kingdom.

But this is not all. The government has not only assumed arbitrarily to
classify the people, on the basis of property, but it has even assumed
to give to some of its judges entire and absolute personal discretion in
the selection of the jurors to be impanelled in criminal cases, as the
following statutes show.

"Be it also ordained and enacted by the same authority, that all
panels hereafter to be returned, which be not at the suit of any
party, that shall be made and put in afore any justice of gaol
delivery or justices of peace in their open sessions _to inquire for
the king, shall hereafter be reformed by additions and taking out of
names of persons by discretion of the same justices before whom such
panel shall be returned; and the same justices shall hereafter
command the sheriff, or his ministers in his absence, to put other
persons in the same panel by their discretions; and that panel so
hereafter to be made, to be good and lawful_. This act to endure only
to the next Parliament."--_11 Henry VII._, ch. 24, sec. 6. (1495.)

This act was continued in force by 1 Henry VIII., ch. 11, (1509,) to the
end of the then next Parliament.

It was reenacted, and made perpetual, by 3 Henry VIII., ch. 12. (1511.)

_These acts gave unlimited authority to the king's j