28 LIFE OF 



of the statutes called of Jeofail, our practice is now 

 freed fi-om those technical entanglements by which 

 justice was too often caught, as it were, in a net, and 

 the merits of a cause made to yield to formal niceties, 

 while chicane rejoiced at the triumph of iniquity. 

 Nor did he hesitate to brush away the cobwebs of the 

 old English law, when he found them inconsistent 

 with the spirit of our own constitution and laws, or 

 with the habits, manners, and feelings of our people. 

 He was, nevertheless, a friend to tlic common law. 

 As a system, he admired it ; as the law of this land 

 he enforced it. He cherished it principally, as the 

 fountain ©f those principles of civil and religious 

 freedom, which, while despotism enslaved a willing 

 world, it was the first to proclaim, and whicli tlie na- 

 tions of the old and new hemisphere, through bloody 

 wars and revolutions, have been, and are still striving 

 witli various success, to naturalize in soils not yet, 

 perhaps, sufiiciently prepared for their reception. 

 Trial by jury, the liberty of the press, the sacred 

 privilege of habeas corpus, always found in him a 

 warm and an able supporter; and on these subjects 

 it is enough to say, that he established the long con- 

 tested general rule, that security for good behaviour 

 should not be demanded before conviction, particularly 

 in cases of alleged libel, where the accusation in- 

 volves the great principle of the liberty of the press ; 

 a decision worthy of Holt or Camden, and of the 

 best times of English freedom. 



His opinion on constitutional law, will remain a 



