allowed to decide whether he was guilty or not. They would be likely
not to be impartial. The question of his guilt or innocence was to be
left to twelve men, taken at hazard from the ordinary walks of life,
and who, consequently, would be likely to sympathize with the accused,
if they saw any disposition to oppress him, rather than to join
against him with a tyrannical government. Thus the jury, as they said,
was a great safeguard. The English have always attached great value to
their system of trial by jury. The plan is retained in this country,
though there is less necessity for it under our institutions. Now, in
the Star Chamber, it had never been the custom to employ a jury. The
members of the court decided the whole question; and as they were
entirely in the interest of the government, the government, of
course, had the fate of every person accused under their direct
control.

The third reason consisted in the nature of the crimes which it had
always been customary to try in this court. It had jurisdiction in a
great variety of cases in which men were brought into collision with
the government, such as charges of riot, sedition, libel, opposition
to the edicts of the council, and to proclamations of the king. These
and similar cases had always been tried by the Star Chamber, and these
were exactly the cases which ought not to be tried by such a court;
for persons accused of hostility to government ought not to be tried
by government itself.

There has been a great deal of discussion about the origin of the term
Star Chamber. The hall where the court was held was in a palace at
Westminster, and there were a great many windows in it. Some think
that it was from this that the court received its name. Others suppose
it was because the court had cognizance of a certain crime, the Latin
name of which has a close affinity with the word star. Another reason
is, that certain documents, called _starra_, used to be kept in the
hall. The prettiest idea is a sort of tradition that the ceiling of
the hall was formerly ornamented with stars, and that this
circumstance gave name to the hall. This supposition, however,
unfortunately, has no better foundation than the others; for there
were no stars on the ceiling in Charles's time, and there had not been
any for a hundred years; nor is there any positive evidence that there
ever were. However, in the absence of any real reason for preferring
one of these ideas over the other,