the common law, that no person appointed by
the king should hold jury trials in criminal cases.]

[Footnote 91: The opinions and decisions of judges and courts are
undeserving of the least reliance, (beyond the intrinsic merit of the
arguments offered to sustain them,) and are unworthy even to be quoted
as evidence of the law, _when those opinions or decisions are favorable
to the power of the government, or unfavorable to the liberties of the
people_. The only reasons that their opinions, _when in favor of
liberty_, are entitled to any confidence, are, first, that all
presumptions of law are in favor of liberty; and, second, that the
admissions of all men, the innocent and the criminal alike, _when made
against their own interests_, are entitled to be received as true,
because it is contrary to human nature for a man to confess anything but
truth against himself.

More solemn farces, or more gross impostures, were never practised upon
mankind, than are all, or very nearly all, those oracular responses by
which courts assume to determine that certain statutes, in restraint of
individual liberty, are within the constitutional power of the
government, and are therefore valid and binding upon the people.

The reason why these courts are so intensely servile and corrupt, is,
that they are not only parts of, but the veriest creatures of, the very
governments whose oppressions they are thus seeking to uphold. They
receive their offices and salaries from, and are impeachable and
removable by, the very governments upon whose acts they affect to sit in
judgment. Of course, no one with his eyes open ever places himself in a
position so incompatible with the liberty of declaring his honest
opinion, unless he do it with the intention of becoming a mere
instrument in the hands of the government for the execution of all its
oppressions.

As proof of this, look at the judicial history of England for the last
five hundred years, and of America from its settlement. In all that time
(so far as I know, or presume) no bench of judges, (probably not even
any single judge,) dependent upon the legislature that passed the
statute, has ever declared a single _penal_ statute invalid, on account
of its being in conflict either with the common law, which the judges in
England have been sworn to preserve, or with the written constitutions,
(recognizing men's natural rights,) which the American judges were under
oath to maintain. Every oppressio