The following provisions, in the Magna Carta of John, illustrate the custom of referring the most important matters of a civil nature, even where the king was a party, to the determination of the peers, or of twelve men, acting by no rules but their own consciences. These examples at least show that there is nothing improbable or unnatural in the idea that juries should try all civil suits according to their own judgments, independently of all laws of the king. _Chap. 65._ "If we have disseized or dispossessed the Welsh of any lands, liberties, or other things, without the legal judgment of their peers, they shall be immediately restored to them. And if any dispute arises upon this head, the matter shall be determined in the Marches,[68] _by the judgment of their peers_," &c. _Chap. 68._ "We shall treat with Alexander, king of Scots, concerning the restoring of his sisters, and hostages, and rights and liberties, in the same form and manner as we shall do to the rest of our barons of England; unless by the engagements, which his father William, late king of Scots, hath entered into with us, it ought to be otherwise; _and this shall be left to the determination of his peers in our court_." _Chap. 56._ "All evil customs concerning forests, warrens, and foresters, warreners, sheriffs, and their officers, rivers and their keepers, shall forthwith be inquired into in each county, _by twelve knights of the same shire_, chosen by the most creditable persons in the same county, _and upon oath_; and within forty days after the said inquest, be utterly abolished, so as never to be restored." There is substantially the same reason why a jury _ought_ to judge of the justice of laws, and hold all unjust laws invalid, in civil suits, as in criminal ones. That reason is the necessity of guarding against the tyranny of the government. Nearly the same oppressions can be practised in civil suits as in criminal ones. For example, individuals may be deprived of their liberty, and robbed of their property, by judgments rendered in civil suits, as well as in criminal ones. If the laws of the king were imperative upon a jury in civil suits, the king might enact laws giving one man's property to another, or confiscating it to the king himself, and authorizing civil suits to obtain possession of it. Thus a man might be robbed of his property at the arbitrary pleasure of the king. In fact, all the property of the kingdom would be placed at the arbitrary disposal of the king, through the judgments of juries in civil suits, if the laws of the king were imperative upon a jury in such suits.[69]