poverty, ignorance, and the inability of concert and resistance,
on the part of the people, that the system had no full or fair
operation. It, nevertheless, under all these disadvantages,
impressed itself upon the understandings, and imbedded itself
in the hearts, of the people, so as no other system of civil liberty
has ever done.
But this view of the two systems compares only the injustice done,
and the justice omitted to be done, in the individual cases adjudged,
without looking beyond them. And some persons might, on
first thought, argue that, if justice failed of being done under
the one system, oftener than positive injustice were done under
the other, the balance was in favor of the latter system. But such
a weighing of the two systems against each other gives no true
idea of their comparative merits or demerits; for, possibly, in
this view alone, the balance would not be very great in favor of
either. To compare, or rather to contrast, the two, we must
consider that, under the jury system, the failures to do justice
would be only rare and exceptional cases; and would be owing
either to the intrinsic difficulty of the questions, or to the
fact that the parties had. transacted their business in a manner
unintelligible to the jury, and the effects would be confined to
the individual or individuals interested in the particular suits.
No permanent law would be established thereby destructive of the
rights of the people in other like cases. And the people at large
would continue to enjoy all their natural rights as before. But
under the other system, whenever an unjust law is enacted by the
legislature, and the judge imposes it upon the jury as
authoritative, and they give a judgment in accordance therewith,
the authority of the law is thereby established, and the whole
people are thus brought under the yoke of that law; because they
then understand that the law will be enforced against them in
future, if they presume to exercise their rights, or refuse to
comply with the exactions of the law. In this manner all unjust
laws are established, and made operative against the rights of the
people.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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