s that. On the contrary, when
they required him to renounce forever the power to punish any freeman,
unless by the consent of his peers, they intended those peers should
judge of, and try, the whole case on its merits, independently of all
arbitrary legislation, or judicial authority, on the part of the king.
In this way they took the liberties of each individual--and thus the
liberties of the whole people--entirely out of the hands of the king,
and out of the power of his laws, and placed them in the keeping of the
people themselves. And this it was that made the trial by jury the
palladium of their liberties.

The trial by jury, be it observed, was the only real barrier interposed
by them against absolute despotism. Could this trial, then, have been
such an entire farce as it necessarily must have been, if the jury had
had no power to judge of the justice of the laws the people were
required to obey? Did it not rather imply that the jury were to judge
independently and fearlessly as to everything involved in the charge,
and especially as to its intrinsic justice, and thereon give their
decision, (unbiased by any legislation of the king,) whether the accused
might be punished? The reason of the thing, no less than the historical
celebrity of the events, as securing the liberties of the people, and
the veneration with which the trial by jury has continued to be
regarded, notwithstanding its essence and vitality have been almost
entirely extracted from it in practice, would settle the question, if
other evidences had left the matter in doubt.

Besides, if his laws were to be authoritative with the jury, why should
John indignantly refuse, as at first he did, to grant the charter, (and
finally grant it only when brought to the last extremity,) on the ground
that it deprived him of all power, and left him only the name of a king?
_He_ evidently understood that the juries were to veto his laws, and
paralyze his power, at discretion, by forming their own opinions as to
the true character of the offences they were to try, and the laws they
were to be called on to enforce; and that "_the king wills and
commands_" was to have no weight with them contrary to their own
judgments of what was intrinsically right.[13]

The barons and people having obtained by the charter all the liberties
they had demanded of the king, it was further provided by the charter
itself that twenty-five barons should be appointed by the barons, out of