Furthemore, it would be absurd and inconsistent to make a jury paramount to legislation in criminal suits, and subordinate to it in civil suits; because an individual, by resisting the execution of a civil judgment, founded upon an unjust law, could give rise to a criminal suit, in which the jury would be bound to hold the same law invalid. So that, if an unjust law were binding upon a jury in civil suits, a defendant, by resisting the execution of the judgment, could, in effect, convert the civil action into a criminal one, in which the jury would be paramount to the same legislation, to which, in the civil suit, they were subordinate. In other words, in the criminal suit, the jury would be obliged to justify the defendant in resisting a law, which, in the civil suit, they had said he was bound to submit to. To make this point plain to the most common mind suppose a law be enacted that the property of A shall be given to B. B brings a civil action to obtain possession of it. If the jury, in this civil suit, are bound to hold the law obligatory, they render a judgment in favor of B, that he be put in possession of the property; thereby declaring that A is bound to submit to a law depriving him of his property. But when the execution of that judgment comes to be attempted that is, when the sheriff comes to take the property for the purpose of delivering it to B A acting, as he has a natural right to do, in defence of his property, resists and kills the sheriff. He is thereupon indicted for murder. On this trial his plea is, that in killing the sheriff, he was simply exercising his natural right of defending his property against an unjust law. The jury, not being bound, in a criminal case, by the authority of an unjust law, judge the act on its merits, and acquit the defendant thus declaring that he was not bound to submit to the same law which the jury, in the civil suit, had, by their judgment, declared that he was bound to submit to. Here is a contradiction between the two judgments. In the civil suit, the law is declared to be obligatory upon A; in the criminal suit, the same law is declared to be of no obligation. It would be a solecism and absurdity in government to allow such consequences as these. Besides, it would be practically impossible to maintain government on such principles; for no government could enforce its civil judgments, unless it could support them by criminal ones, in case of resistance. A jury must therefore be paramount to legislation in both civil and criminal cases, or in neither. If they are paramount in neither, they are no protection to liberty. If they are paramount in both, then all legislation goes only for what it may chance to be worth in the estimation of a jury.