"_The issue_" to be tried is whether A owes B anything; and if so, how much? or whether A has in his possession anything that belongs to B; or whether A has wronged B, and ought to make compensation; and if so, how much? No statute passed by a legislature, simply as a legislature, can alter either of these "issues" in hardly any conceivable case, perhaps in none. No _unjust_ law could ever alter them in any. They are all mere questions of natural justice, which legislatures have no power to alter, and with which they have no right to interfere, further than to provide for having them settled by the most competent and impartial tribunal that it is practicable to have, and then for having all just decisions enforced. And any tribunal, whether judge or jury, that attempts to try these issues, has no more moral right to be swerved from the line of justice, by the will of a legislature, than by the will of any other body of men whatever. And this oath does not require or permit a jury to be so swerved. In criminal cases, Blackstone says the oath of the jury in England is: "Well and truly to try, and true deliverance make, between our sovereign lord, the king, and the prisoner whom they have in charge, and a true verdict to give according to the evidence."--_4 Blackstone_, 355. "The issue" to be tried, in a criminal case, is "_guilty_," or "_not guilty_." The laws passed by a legislature can rarely, if ever, have anything to do with this issue. "_Guilt_" is an _intrinsic_ quality of actions, and can neither be created, destroyed, nor changed by legislation. And no tribunal that attempts to try this issue can have any moral right to declare a man _guilty_, for an act that is intrinsically innocent, at the bidding of a legislature, any more than at the bidding of anybody else. And this oath does not require or permit a jury to do so. The words, "_according to the evidence_," have doubtless been introduced into the above oaths in modern times. They are unquestionably in violation of the Common Law, and of Magna Carta, if by them be meant such evidence only as the government sees fit to allow to go to the jury. If the government can dictate the evidence, and require the jury to decide according to that evidence, it necessarily dictates the conclusion to which they must arrive. In that case the trial is really a trial by the government, and not by the jury. _The jury_ cannot _try an issue_, unless _they_ determine what evidence shall be admitted. The ancient oaths, it will be observed, say nothing about "_according to the evidence_." They obviously take it for granted that the jury try the whole case; and of course that _they_ decide what evidence shall be admitted. It would be intrinsically an immoral and criminal act for a jury to declare a man guilty, or to declare that one man owed money to another, unless all the evidence were admitted, which _they_ thought ought to be admitted, for ascertaining the truth.[56]