nd not by the crooked cord of
discretion. Whatever is general is better born. We take our common lot
with men of the same description. But to be selected and marked out by a
particular brand of unworthiness among our fellow-citizens, is a lot of
all others the hardest to be borne: and consequently is of all others
that act which ought only to be trusted to the legislature, as not only
legislative in its nature, but of all parts of legislature the most
odious. The question is over, if this is shown not to be a legislative
act. But what is very usual and natural, is to corrupt judicature into
legislature. On this point it is proper to inquire whether a court of
judicature, which decides without appeal, has it as a necessary incident
of such judicature, that whatever it decides _de jure_ is law. Nobody
will, I hope, assert this, because the direct consequence would be the
entire extinction of the difference between true and false judgments.
For, if the judgment makes the law, and not the law directs the judgment,
it is impossible there could be such a thing as an illegal judgment
given.

But, instead of standing upon this ground, they introduce another
question, wholly foreign to it, whether it ought not to be submitted to
as if it were law. And then the question is, By the Constitution of this
country, what degree of submission is due to the authoritative acts of a
limited power? This question of submission, determine it how you please,
has nothing to do in this discussion and in this House. Here it is not
how long the people are bound to tolerate the illegality of our
judgments, but whether we have a right to substitute our occasional
opinion in the place of law, so as to deprive the citizen of his
franchise.

SPEECH ON THE POWERS OF JURIES IN PROSECUTIONS FOR LIBELS
MARCH, 1771

I have always understood that a superintendence over the doctrines, as
well as the proceedings, of the courts of justice, was a principal object
of the constitution of this House; that you were to watch at once over
the lawyer and the law; that there should he an orthodox faith as well as
proper works: and I have always looked with a degree of reverence and
admiration on this mode of superintendence. For being totally disengaged
from the detail of juridical practice, we come to something, perhaps, the
better qualified, and certainly much the better disposed to assert the
genuine principle of the laws; in which we can, as a