As to the phrase “aut aliquo modo destruatur” (nor be in any way destroyed), Blackstone, as well as other writers, gives a very wide signification to this word “destroy;” and, in general terms, it may be said that they agree in understanding that these words of the charter sternly forbid any proceeding on the body of an accused person unless after trial by jury. If it were possible for me here to describe in detail that proceeding which the Acts in question sanction upon the body of a person suspected or accused, and who has been condemned without any jury trial, no further words of mine would be needed to convince my readers that this proceeding comes within the scope of that word “destroy.” Since, however, the subject is one of which we are not permitted to speak, as society in its present state seems to judge an indecent action to be less reprehensible than the plain words which would be needful to bring that indecent action to light and to judgment, I refrain from doing more here than asserting, and I do assert in the strongest manner, that the compulsory proceedings upon the unwilling bodies of the subjects of these Acts are in the strictest sense of the term a “destruction,” as indicated in the words of Magna Charta, and elucidated by subsequent comments and events. The hardest part of this whole controversy is, that the deepest wrong among all these wrongs is unmentionable. Amongst many curious instances in the history of England of the jealous spirit in which the slightest bodily injury which had been inflicted without a jury trial was resented by the people of England, I will merely quote one, the case of Sir John Coventry:—