"From the time of the Saxons," (that is, from the commencement of the reign of William the Conqueror,) "till the reign of Edward the first, (1272 to 1307,) the several county courts and sheriffs courts did decline in their interest and authority. The methods by which they were broken were two-fold. First, by granting commissions to the sheriffs by writ of JUSTICIES, whereby the sheriff had a particular jurisdiction granted him to be judge of a particular cause, independent of the suitors of the county court," (that is, without a jury;) "and these commissions were after the Norman form, by which (according to which) all power of judicature was immediately derived from the king." Gilbert on the Court of Chancery, p. l. The several authorities now given show that it was the custom of the Norman kings, not only to appoint persons to sit as judges in jury trials, in criminal cases, but that they also commissioned individuals to sit in singular and particular eases, as occasion required; and that they therefore readily could, and naturally would, and therefore undoubtedly did, commission individuals with a special view to their adaptation or capacity to procure such judgments as the kings desired. The extract from Gilbert suggests also the usurpation of the Norman kings, in their assumption that they, (and not the people, as by the common law,) were the fountains of justice. It was only by virtue of this illegal assumption that they could claim to appoint their tools to hold courts. All these things show how perfectly lawless and arbitrary the kings were, both before and after Magna Carta, and how necessary to liberty was the principle of Magna Carta and the common law, that no person appointed by the king should hold jury trials in criminal cases. [5] In this extract, Palgrave seems to assume that the king himself had a right to sit as judge, in jury trials, in the county courts, in both civil and criminal cases. I apprehend he had no such power at the common law, but only to sit in the trial of appeals, and in the trial of peers, and of civil suits in which peers were parties, and possibly in the courts of ancient demesne. [6] The opinions and decisions of judges and courts are undeserving of the least reliance, (beyond the intrinsic merit of the arguments offered to sustain them,) and are unworthy even to be quoted as evidence of the law, when those opinions or decisions are favorable to the power of the government, or unfavorable to the liberties of the people. The only reasons that their opinions, when in favor of liberty, are entitled to any confidence, are, first, that all presumptions of law are in favor of liberty; and, second, that the admissions of all men, the innocent and the criminal alike, when made against their own interests, are entitled to be received as true, because it is contrary to human nature for a man to confess anything but truth against himself.