ustices to pack
juries at their discretion; and abolished the last vestige of the common
law right of the people to sit as jurors, and judge of their own
liberties, in the courts to which the acts applied._

Yet, as matters of law, these statutes were no more clear violations of
the common law, the fundamental and paramount "law of the land," than
were those statutes which affixed the property qualifications before
named; because, if the king, or the government, can select the jurors on
the ground of property, it can select them on any other ground
whatever.

Any infringement or restriction of the common law right of the whole
body of the freemen of the kingdom to eligibility as jurors, was legally
an abolition of the trial by jury itself. The juries no longer
represented "the country," but only a part of the country; that part,
too, on whose favor the government chose to rely for the maintenance of
its power, and which it therefore saw fit to select as being the most
reliable instruments for its purposes of oppression towards the rest.
And the selection was made on the same principle, on which tyrannical
governments generally select their supporters, viz., that of
conciliating those who would be most dangerous as enemies, and most
powerful as friends--that is, the wealthy.[83]

These restrictions, or indeed any one of them, of the right of
eligibility as jurors, was, in principle, a complete abolition of the
English constitution; or, at least, of its most vital and valuable part.
It was, in principle, an assertion of a right, on the part of the
government, to _select_ the individuals who were to determine the
authority of its own laws, and the extent of its own powers. It was,
therefore, _in effect_, the assertion of a right, on the part of the
government itself, to determine its own powers, and the authority of its
own legislation, over the people; and a denial of all right, on the part
of the people, to judge of or determine their own liberties against the
government. It was, therefore, in reality, a declaration of entire
absolutism on the part of the government. It was an act as purely
despotic, _in principle_, as would have been the express abolition of
all juries whatsoever. By "the law of the land," which the kings were
sworn to maintain, every free adult male British subject was eligible to
the jury box, with full power to exercise his own judgment as to the
authority and obligation of every statute of the ki