Furthermore, 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.