l as it is known by the people at large. If
_they_ (the jury) are not presumed to know the law, neither the accused
nor the people at large can be presumed to know it. Hence, it follows
that one principle of the _true_ trial by jury is, that no accused
person shall be held responsible for any other or greater knowledge of
the law than is common to his political equals, who will generally be
men of nearly similar condition in life. But the doctrine of Mansfield
is, that the body of the people, from whom jurors are taken, are
responsible to a law, _which it is agreed they cannot understand_. What
is this but despotism?--and not merely despotism, but insult and
oppression of the intensest kind?

This doctrine of Mansfield is the doctrine of all who deny the right of
juries to judge of the law, although all may not choose to express it in
so blunt and unambiguous terms. But the doctrine evidently admits of no
other interpretation or defence.]

[Footnote 105: This declaration of Mansfield, that juries in England
"are not sworn to decide the law" in criminal cases, is a plain
falsehood. They are sworn to try the whole case at issue between the
king and the prisoner, and that includes the law as well as the fact.
See _juror's oath_, page 86.]

CHAPTER X.

MORAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR JURORS.

The trial by jury must, if possible, be construed to be such that a man
can rightfully sit in a jury, and unite with his fellows in giving
judgment. But no man can rightfully do this, unless he hold in his own
hand alone a veto upon any judgment or sentence whatever to be rendered
by the jury against a defendant, which veto he must be permitted to use
according to his own discretion and conscience, and not bound to use
according to the dictation of either legislatures or judges.

The prevalent idea, that a juror may, at the mere dictation of a
legislature or a judge, and without the concurrence of his own
conscience or understanding, declare a man "_guilty_," and thus in
effect license the government to punish him; and that the legislature or
the judge, and not himself, has in that case all the moral
responsibility for the correctness of the principles on which the
judgment was rendered, is one of the many gross impostures by which it
could hardly have been supposed that any sane man could ever have been
deluded, but which governments have nevertheless succeeded in inducing
the people at large to receive and act upon.

As a m