The juries of England are illegal for another reason, viz., that the statutes cited require the jurors (except in London and a few other places) to be _freeholders_. All the other free British subjects are excluded; whereas, at common law, all such subjects are eligible to sit in juries, whether they be freeholders or not. It is true, the ancient common law required the jurors to be freeholders; but the term _freeholder_ no longer expresses the same idea that it did in the ancient common law; because no land is now holden in England on the same principle, or by the same tenure, as that on which all the land was held in the early times of the common law. As has heretofore been mentioned, in the early times of the common law the land was considered the property of the state; and was all holden by the _tenants_, so called, (that is, _holders_,) on the condition of their rendering certain military and civil services to the state, (or to the king as the representative of the state,) under the name of _rents_. Those who held lands on these terms were called free _tenants_, that is, _free holders_--meaning free persons, or members of the state, holding lands--to distinguish them from villeins, or serfs, who were not members of the state, but held their lands by a more servile tenure, and also to distinguish them from persons of foreign birth, outlaws, and all other persons, who were not members of the state. Every freeborn adult male Englishman (who had not lost his civil rights by crime or otherwise) was entitled to land of _right_; that is, by virtue of his civil freedom, or membership of the body politic. Every member of the state was therefore a freeholder; and every freeholder was a member of the state. And the members of the state were therefore called freeholders. But what is material to be observed, is, that a man's right to land was an incident to his _civil freedom_; not his civil freedom an incident to his right to land. He was a freeholder because he was a _freeborn_ member of the state; and not a freeborn member of the state because he was a freeholder; for this last would be an absurdity. As the tenures of lands changed, the term _freeholder_ lost its original significance, and no longer described a man who held land of the state by virtue of his civil freedom, but only one who held it in fee-simple--that is, free of any liability to military or civil services. But the government, in fixing the qualifications of jurors, has adhered to the term _freeholder_ after that term has ceased to express the _thing_ originally designated by it.