Price.] 210 t^^y= 



"That trial by jury shall be as heretofore, and the right thereof re- 

 main inviolate." 



This time-honored institution, as known to us, peculiar to British 

 and American jurisprudence, had the germ of its origin in the forests 

 of Grermany, whence it is traced with other features of the Constitu- 

 tions of England and of these States. It must have been felt to be 

 a bulwark of liberty and justice, otherwise it could not have been so 

 long and so sacredly preserved as our inheritance, through successive 

 invasions and conquests of England, and revolutions there and here, 

 and many usurpations of arbitrary power, to be here made funda- 

 mental in the Declarations of Rights contained in our Constitutions. 



" Whoever," says Montesquieu, " shall read the admirable treatise 

 of Tacitus on the manners of the Germans, will find that it is from 

 them the English have borrowed the idea of their political govern- 

 ment. This beautiful system was invented first in the woods." (Bk. 

 XI, Ch. VI.) Tacitus, after speaking of those general councils of 

 the whole community, which must have been the origin of the Wit- 

 tenagemote, or British Parliament, says, " It is in these assemblies 

 that princes are chosen, and chiefs elected to act as magistrates in 

 the several cantons of the State. To each of these judicial ofiicers, 

 assistants are appointed from the body of the people, to the number 

 of a hundred, who attend to give their advice, and strengthen the 

 hands of justice." (Sec. XIII.) Divisions of the freemen into 

 hundreds, who attended the hundred court, are of frequent mention 

 in the early laws of France and Lombardy, and they became under 

 King Alfred and his successors, the prevailing system over England ; 

 and the name is yet familiar in portions of our own country. 



Some have traced the origin of juries to Athens and Rome; but 

 these were more popular assemblages, sworn, it is true, in the cause, 

 but deciding by majorities; and such may have been the character 

 of the Saxon and Roman assemblages, who aided in the administra- 

 tion of justice, and the conservation of the peace. Selden ascribes to 

 the reign of one of the Ethelreds the first mention of a jury of twelve. 

 The law is in these words : "In every hundred let there be a court; 

 and let twelve freemen of mature age, together with their foreman, 

 swear upon the holy relicks, that they will condemn no innocent, 

 and will absolve no guilty person." Selden refers this law to the 

 period of Ethelred who began his reign in 961 ; but Reeves, in his 

 History of English Law, to a king of that name who next preceded 

 Alfred the Great, a hundred years prior, whom Hume calls Ethered. 

 The transactions of the reign of Alfred, which began in 871, show 



