t fit that this dishonorable contention between the
court and juries should subsist any longer? On what principle is it that
a jury [juror?] refuses to be directed by the court as to his
_competence_? Whether a libel or no libel be a question of law or of
fact may be doubtful; but a question of jurisdiction and competence is
certainly a question of law: on this the court ought undoubtedly to
judge, and to judge solely and exclusively. If they judge wrong from
excusable error, you ought to correct it, as to-day it is proposed, by
an explanatory bill,--or if by corruption, by bill of _penalties_
declaratory, and by punishment. What does a juror say to a judge, when
he refuses his opinion upon a question of judicature? "You are so
corrupt, that I should consider myself a partaker of your crime, were I
to be guided by your opinion"; or, "You are so grossly ignorant, that I,
fresh from my hounds, from my plough, my counter, or my loom, am fit to
direct you in your own profession." This is an unfitting, it is a
dangerous state of things. The spirit of any sort of men is not a fit
_rule_ for deciding on the bounds of their jurisdiction: first, because
it is different in different men, and even different in the same at
different times, and can never become the proper directing line of law;
next, because it is not reason, but feeling, and, when once it is
irritated, it is not apt to confine itself within its proper limits. If
it becomes not difference in opinion upon law, but a trial of spirit
between parties, our courts of law are no longer the temple of justice,
but the amphitheatre for gladiators. No,--God forbid! Juries ought to
take their law from the bench only; but it is _our_ business that they
should hear nothing from the bench but what is agreeable to the
principles of the Constitution. The jury are to hear the judge: the
judge is to hear the law, where it speaks plain; where it does not, he
is to hear the legislature. As I do not think these opinions of the
judges to be agreeable to those principles, I wish to take the only
method in which they can or ought to be corrected,--by bill.

Next, my opinion is, that it ought to be rather by a bill for removing
controversies than by a bill in the state of manifest and express
declaration and in words _de praeterito_. I do this upon reasons of
equity and constitutional policy. I do not want to censure the present
judges. I think them to be excused for their error. Ignorance is