But, in order to understand the common law trial by jury, as it existed prior to Magna Carta, and as it was guaranteed by that instrument, it is perhaps indispensable to understand more fully the nature of the courts in which juries sat, and the extent of the powers exercised by juries in those courts. I therefore give in a note extended extracts, on these points, from Stuart on the Constitution of England, and from Blackstone's Commentaries.[53] That all these courts were mere _courts of conscience, in which the juries were sole judges, administering justice according to their own ideas of it_, is not only shown by the extracts already given, but is explicitly acknowledged in the following one, in which the _modern "courts of conscience"_ are compared with the _ancient hundred and county courts_, and the preference given to the latter, on the ground that the duties of the jurors in the one case, and of the commissioners in the other, are the same, and that the consciences of a jury are a safer and purer tribunal than the consciences of individuals specially appointed, and holding permanent offices. "But there is one species of courts constituted by act of Parliament, in the city of London, and other trading and populous districts, which, in their proceedings, so vary from the course of the common law, that they deserve a more particular consideration. I mean the court of requests, _or courts of conscience_, for the recovery of small debts. The first of these was established in London so early as the reign of Henry VIII., by an act of their common council; which, however, was certainly insufficient for that purpose, and illegal, till confirmed by statute 3 Jac. I., ch. 15, which has since been explained and amended by statute 14 Geo. II., ch. 10. The constitution is this: two aldermen and four commoners sit twice a week to hear all causes of debt not exceeding the value of forty shillings; which they examine in a summary way, by the oath of the parties or other witnesses, _and make such order therein as is consonant to equity and good conscience_.* * Divers trading towns and other districts have obtained acts of Parliament, for establishing in them _courts of conscience_ upon nearly the same plan as that in the city of London.