It is evident that it was in this way, _by the free and concurrent judgments of juries, approving and enforcing certain laws and rules of conduct, corresponding to their notions of right and justice_, that the laws and customs, which, for the most part, made up the _common law_, and were called, at that day, "_the good laws, and good customs_," and "_the law of the land_," were established. How otherwise could they ever have become established, as Blackstone says they were, "_by long and immemorial usage, and by their universal reception throughout the kingdom_,"[54] when, as the Mirror says, "_justice was so done, that every one so judged his neighbor, by such judgment as a man could not elsewhere receive in the like cases, until such times as the customs of the realm were put in writing and certainly published_?" The fact that, in that dark age, so many of the principles of natural equity, as those then embraced in the _Common Law_, should have been so uniformly recognized and enforced by juries, as to have become established by general consent as "_the law of the land_;" and the further fact that this "law of the land" was held so sacred that even the king could not lawfully infringe or alter it, but was required to swear to maintain it, are beautiful and impressive illustrations of the truth that men's minds, even in the comparative infancy of other knowledge, have clear and coincident ideas of the elementary principles, and the paramount obligation, of justice. The same facts also prove that the common mind, and the general, or, perhaps, rather, the universal conscience, as developed in the untrammelled judgments of juries, may be safely relied upon for the preservation of individual rights in civil society; and that there is no necessity or excuse for that deluge of arbitrary legislation, with which the present age is overwhelmed, under the pretext that unless laws be _made_, the law will not be known; a pretext, by the way, almost universally used for overturning, instead of establishing, the principles of justice. SECTION III. _The Oaths of Jurors._ The oaths that have been administered to jurors, in England, and which are their _legal_ guide to their duty, _all_ (so far as I have ascertained them) corroborate the idea that the jurors are to try all cases on their intrinsic merits, independently of any laws that they deem unjust or oppressive. It is probable that an oath was never administered to a jury in England, either in a civil or criminal case, to try it _according to law_. The earliest oath that I have found prescribed by law to be administered to jurors is in the laws of Ethelred, (about the year 1015,) which require that the jurors "_shall swear, with their hands upon a holy thing, that they will condemn no man that is innocent, nor acquit any that is guilty_."--_4 Blackstone_, 302. _2 Turner's History of the Anglo-Saxons, 155. Wilkins' Laws of the Anglo-Saxons_, 117. _Spelman's Glossary_, word _Jurata_.