"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. 1. 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 cases, 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.] [Footnote 91: 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. More solemn farces, or more gross impostures, were never practised upon mankind, than are all, or very nearly all, those oracular responses by which courts assume to determine that certain statutes, in restraint of individual liberty, are within the constitutional power of the government, and are therefore valid and binding upon the people.