ch insinuations abound,
must be obvious to every one.
Can it be supposed, that any person would be so inconsistent, after a
cause was given against him, in a court where judges presided whose
characters, as honest and just men, were unrivalled, as to attempt to have
the cause re-heard before the federal court?
Indeed if such a thing was to take place, the man in low circumstances
would have nothing to fear, as the payment of all charges would fall upon
the person who lost the cause, and there is not the shadow of a doubt,
with respect to the person's losing the cause, who had lost it before in a
court of justice in either of the states.
In regard to the equal administration of justice in all the states, a
rattle brained anti-federalist, in the last Mass. Gazette, under the
signature of Agrippa,(14) has asserted, that the inequality of the
administration of justice throughout the states, was a favourite argument
in support of the new constitution--an assertion founded on as impudent and
barefaced a falsehood as ever was uttered, for the very reverse is the
case. The equality of the administration of justice in the different
states, has ever been dwelt upon as recommendatory of the new plan of
government. I am induced to think that Agrippa is non compos, and this
might proceed from his close application to study, while the library of a
celebrated university was under his care(15)--he seems to be one of those
whom Pope describes when he says,
"Some are bewilder'd in the maze of schools," &c.
I hope my readers will forgive this digression, when they consider that
such scandalous lies, absurdities, and misrepresentations as the
productions of Agrippa, that political Quixote, abound with, may have a
tendency to prejudice the minds of the misinformed against the new
constitution, unless they are properly noticed.
Section 2, of Article III. provides, among other things, that the trial of
all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be by jury; and such
trial shall be held in the state where the crime shall have been
committed; but when not committed within any state, the trial shall be at
such place or places, as Congress may by law have directed. It has been
frequently asserted that the new constitution deprived the subject of the
right of trial by jury; on what grounds such an assertion could be
founded, is to me a mystery; for the constitution expressly says, that the
trial shall be by jury, except i
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