fications of jurors in England vary exceedingly.]]

[Footnote g: See Appendix, Q.]

However clear most of these truths may seem to be, they do not command
universal assent, and in France, at least, the institution of trial by
jury is still very imperfectly understood. If the question arises as to
the proper qualification of jurors, it is confined to a discussion of
the intelligence and knowledge of the citizens who may be returned, as
if the jury was merely a judicial institution. This appears to me to
be the least part of the subject. The jury is pre-eminently a political
institution; it must be regarded as one form of the sovereignty of the
people; when that sovereignty is repudiated, it must be rejected, or it
must be adapted to the laws by which that sovereignty is established.
The jury is that portion of the nation to which the execution of the
laws is entrusted, as the Houses of Parliament constitute that part
of the nation which makes the laws; and in order that society may be
governed with consistency and uniformity, the list of citizens qualified
to serve on juries must increase and diminish with the list of electors.
This I hold to be the point of view most worthy of the attention of the
legislator, and all that remains is merely accessory.

I am so entirely convinced that the jury is pre-eminently a political
institution that I still consider it in this light when it is applied in
civil causes. Laws are always unstable unless they are founded upon the
manners of a nation; manners are the only durable and resisting power
in a people. When the jury is reserved for criminal offences, the people
only witnesses its occasional action in certain particular cases; the
ordinary course of life goes on without its interference, and it
is considered as an instrument, but not as the only instrument, of
obtaining justice. This is true a fortiori when the jury is only applied
to certain criminal causes.

When, on the contrary, the influence of the jury is extended to civil
causes, its application is constantly palpable; it affects all the
interests of the community; everyone co-operates in its work: it thus
penetrates into all the usages of life, it fashions the human mind to
its peculiar forms, and is gradually associated with the idea of justice
itself.

The institution of the jury, if confined to criminal causes, is always
in danger, but when once it is introduced into civil proceedings it
defies the aggressions of