It seems, then, that the Virginian, in claiming an inhabitant of Boston as his slave, in fact brings _a suit_ against him for services due worth one thousand dollars. Now remember, Sir, the fugitive is not to be delivered up, as a mass of flesh, or inanimate matter, belonging to the claimant, but as a debtor, in the phraseology of your own law, "_owing_ service or labor." The suit is brought for service or labor _due_, and the Constitution provides that the person so owing service or labor shall be delivered to him to whom the same is "_due_." And now, is this suit for service due "a suit at _common law_"? Again let the Supreme Court answer. "The phrase _common law_, found in this clause [the clause guaranteeing a jury trial], is used in contradistinction to equity and admiralty and maritime jurisdiction. It is well known, that, in civil causes in courts of equity and admiralty, juries do not intervene, and that courts of equity use the trial by jury only in extraordinary cases, to inform the conscience of the court. When, therefore, we find that the amendment requires that the right of trial by jury shall be preserved in suits at common law, the natural conclusion is, that this distinction was present to the minds of the framers of the amendment. By _common law_, they meant what the Constitution denominated, in the third article, 'law'; not merely suits which the common law recognized among its old and settled proceedings, but suits in which legal rights were to be ascertained and determined, in contradistinction to those where equitable rights alone were recognized, and equitable remedies were administered.... In a just sense, the amendment, then, may be construed to embrace _all suits_ which are not of equity and admiralty jurisdiction, _whatever may be the peculiar form_ which they may assume to settle legal rights." (3 _Peters_, 446.)