orks: 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 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 body,
have no other than an enlarged and a public interest. We have no common
cause of a professional attachment or professional emulations to bias
our minds; we have no foregone opinions which from obstinacy and false
point of honor we think ourselves at all events obliged to support. So
that, with our own minds perfectly disengaged from the exercise, we may
superintend the execution of the national justice, which from this
circumstance is better secured to the people than in any other country
under heaven it can be. As our situation puts us in a proper condition,
our power enables us to execute this trust. We may, when we see cause of
complaint, administer a remedy: it is in our choice by an address to
remove an improper judge, by impeachment before the peers to pursue to
destruction a corrupt judge, or by bill to assert, to explain, to
enforce, or to reform the law, just as the occasion and necessity of the
case shall guide us. We stand in a situation very honorable to ourselves
and very useful to our country, if we do not abuse or abandon the trust
that is placed in us.

The question now before you is upon the power of juries in prosecuting
for libels. There are four opinions:--1. That the doctrine as held by
the courts is proper and constitutional, and therefore should not be
altered; 2. That it is neither proper nor constitutional, but that it
will be rendered worse by your interference; 3. That it is wrong, but
that the only remedy is a bill of retrospect; 4. The opinion of those
who bring in the bill, that the thing is wrong, but that it is enough to
direct the judgment of the court in future.

The bill brought in is for the purpose of asserting and securing a great
object in the juridical constitution of this kingdom, which, from a long
series of practices and opinions in our judges, has _in one point_, and
in one very essential point, deviated from the true principle.

It is the very ancient privilege of the people of England, that they
shall be tried, except in the known exceptions, not by judges appointed
by the crown, but by their own fellow-subjects, the peers of that county
court