All the state conventions for adopting the constitution, whose debates are preserved, and all the leading men who figured in them, held,--contrary to Mr. Webster,--that the third article in the constitution, providing for courts, carried jury trials in civil cases with it. Mr. Marshall, afterwards Chief Justice Marshall, said in the Virginia convention, “Does the word _court_, [in the constitution,] only mean the judges? Does not the determination of a jury necessarily lead to the judgment of the court? Is there any thing which gives the judges exclusive jurisdiction of matters of fact? What is the object of a jury trial? To inform the court of the facts. When a court has cognizance of facts, does it not follow that they can make inquiry by a jury? It is impossible to be otherwise.”--3 _Elliott’s Debates_, 506. The third article in the Virginia bill of rights was as follows:-- “In controversies respecting property, and in suits between man and man, the ancient trial by jury is preferable to any other, and ought to be held sacred.” This article being read in the convention, Judge Marshall said _the trial by jury was as well secured by the United States constitution, as by the Virginia bill of rights_.--Ib. 524. He said this in reference to civil cases. In the Massachusetts convention, it was said, without a doubt’s being expressed from any quarter, that “the word _court_ does not, either by popular or technical construction, exclude the use of a jury to try facts. When people in common language talk of a trial at the court of common pleas, or the supreme judicial court, do they not include all the branches and members of such courts, the jurors as well as the judges? They certainly do, whether they mention the jurors expressly or not. Our state legislators have construed the word court in the same way.”--2 _Elliott’s Debates_, 127. Such was the doctrine maintained by the leading minds of the state conventions; by Christopher Gore, in Massachusetts; by Judge Wilson, and Chief Justice McKean, in Pennsylvania; by Chief Justice Marshall, Judge Pendleton, and Mr. Madison, in Virginia; by Judge Iredell, in North Carolina, and many other distinguished names. In the Virginia convention, objection was made to the constitution because it did not _expressly_ secure to the accused the privilege of challenging or excepting to jurors in criminal cases. But Mr. Pendleton, the President of the convention, and for so many years afterwards the highest judicial officer in the state, replied: “When the constitution says that the trial shall be by jury, does it not say that every incident will go along with it?”--3 _Elliott’s Debates_, 497.