452 
POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
is often attended with practical difficulties; these, how- 
however, the increasing experience of the people will 
probably enable them to remove. 
In 1826, the regulations regarding the local magis¬ 
trates was improved, and two were appointed to pre¬ 
serve the peace in each district, from whose decision 
any one could appeal, even in petty cases, to the judges 
of the island. At the same time, the salaries of the 
magistrates, as well as those of the judges, which are 
paid by the king, were definitively fixed. 
The law which declared that No man should be tried 
for any great offence (viz. one which affected his person, 
liberty, or possessions) without a jury,^^ we have always 
regarded as the basis of their public justice. The liberty 
granted to the prisoner, of objecting to any members of 
the jury, is a valuable security for the proper and im¬ 
partial investigation of the case. 
In 1826, this enactment was also amended, and it Was 
then enjoined, not only that a chief or raatira should be 
tried by his equals, but that if a peasant or mechanic 
were brought to trial, the jury also should be peasants 
or mechanics. Every friend of liberty, and the natural 
rights of men, and to the order and good government 
of society, must rejoice that these infant nations should 
have enjoyed, so early in their civil existence, the 
security which the trial of a subject by his peers is 
adapted to insure. At the same time it was also enacted, 
that, in all cases, the jury should be unanimous in their 
verdict. 
Besides these regulations, which were included in the 
first legislative code, established in 1823, and improved 
in 1826; at this latter period, several important articles 
were added, and the Huahinian code now contains fifty 
