These officers, who appointed the sheriffs, were themselves appointed by the king, and held their offices during his pleasure. Their appointment of sheriffs was, therefore, equivalent to an appointment by the king himself. And the sheriffs, thus appointed, held their offices only during the pleasure of the king, and were of course mere tools of the king; and their selection of jurors was really a selection by the king himself. In this manner the king usurped the selection of the jurors who were to sit in judgment upon his own laws. Here, then, was another usurpation, by which the common law trial by jury was destroyed, so far as related to the county courts, in which the sheriffs presided, and which were the most important courts of the kingdom. From this cause alone, if there were no other, there has not been a legal jury in a _county_ court in England, for more than five hundred years. In nearly or quite all the States of the United States the juries are illegal, for one or the other of the same reasons that make the juries in England illegal. In order that the juries in the United States may be legal--that is, in accordance with the principles of the common law--it is necessary that every adult male member of the state should have his name in the jury box, or be eligible as a juror. Yet this is the case in hardly a single state. In New Jersey, Maryland, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Mississippi, the jurors are required to be _freeholders_. But this requirement is illegal, for the reason that the term _freeholder_, in this country, has no meaning analogous to the meaning it had in the ancient common law. In Arkansas, Missouri, Indiana, and Alabama, jurors are required to be "freeholders or householders." Each of these requirements is illegal. In Florida, they are required to be "householders." In Connecticut, Maine, Ohio, and Georgia, jurors are required to have the qualifications of "electors." In Virginia, they are required to have a property qualification of one hundred dollars. In Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, New York, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin, certain civil authorities of the towns, cities, and counties are authorized to select, once in one, two, or three years, a certain number of the people--a small number compared with the whole--from whom jurors are to be taken when wanted; thus disfranchising all except the few thus selected. In Maine and Vermont, the inhabitants, by vote in town meeting, have a veto upon the jurors selected by the authorities of the town. In Massachusetts, the inhabitants, by vote in town meeting, can strike out any names inserted by the authorities, and insert others; thus making jurors elective by the people, and, of course, representatives only of a majority of the people. In Illinois, the jurors are selected, for each term of court, by the county commissioners.