Although this command to the sheriff's and other officers, not to summon, as jurors, those who, from age and disease, were physically incapable of performing the duties, may not, of itself, afford any absolute or legal implication, by which we can determine precisely who were, and who were not, eligible as jurors at common law, yet the exceptions here made nevertheless carry a seeming confession with them that, at common law, all male adults were eligible as jurors. But the main principle of the feudal system itself, shows that all the full and free adult male members of the state that is, all who were free born, and had not lost their civil rights by crime, or otherwise must, at common law, have been eligible as jurors. What was that principle? It was, that the state rested for support upon the land, and not upon taxation levied upon the people personally. The lands of the country were considered the property of the state, and were made to support the state in this way: A portion of them was set apart to the king, the rents of which went to pay his personal and official expenditures, not including the maintenance of armies, or the administration of justice. War and the administration of justice were provided for in the following manner. The freemen, or the free-born adult male members of the state who had not forfeited their political rights were entitled to land of right, (until all the land was taken up,) on condition of their rendering certain military and civil services, to the state. The military services consisted in serving personally as soldiers, or contributing an equivalent in horses, provisions, or other military supplies. The civil services consisted, among other things, in serving as jurors (and, it would appear, as witnesses) in the courts of justice. For these services they received no compensation other than the use of their lands. In this way the state was sustained; and the king had no power to levy additional burdens or taxes upon the people. The persons holding lands on these terms were called freeholders in later times freemen meaning free and full members of the state. Now, as the principle of the system was that the freeholders held their lands of the state, on the condition of rendering these military and civil services as rents for their lands, the principle implies that all the freeholders were liable to these rents, and were therefore eligible as jurors. Indeed, I do not know that it has ever been doubted that, at common law, all the freeholders were eligible as jurors. If all had not been eligible, we unquestionably should have had abundant evidence of the exceptions. And if anybody, at this day, allege any exceptions, the burden will be on him to prove them. The presumption clearly is that all were eligible. The first invasion which I find made, by the English statutes, upon this common law principle, was made in I285, seventy years after Magna Carta. It was then enacted as follows: