wont to attach to it. Among the phenomena of human life is this, that in all countries and ages certain ideas or beliefs have been found so pleasing to the national vanity as to be regarded as the most fundamental of truths. They have descended from generation to generation as a sort of popular inheritance. They have formed part of the education of youth and the entertainment of maturer age. They have been placed, so to speak, in the national Pantheon, and worshiped as at least half divine.
No one ever thought of doubting them, because to do so-would be sacrilege; to deny them, a crime. Instances of this will occur to every one, and no more marked instance can be found than this, that we owe trial by jury to the wisdom, courage, and foresight of the Anglo-Saxons of the reign of John. A reference to the circumstances of that period will make this evident.
In consequence of their miserable condition, the hardships and exactions of the feudal system, and the cruelty and rapacity of those above them, the Anglo-Saxons, who constituted the lowest orders of the people at that time, were crying out for a return to the laws and customs of the Anglo-Saxon period. These customs included, as we have seen, a sort of trial by jury of the crudest and most rudimentary kind. But it was not for this they cried. This, such as it was, they had never lost. Under the Norman kings it was encouraged rather than suppressed, and in the reign of John had advanced far toward a regular judicial system. To this extent only can the reference to trial by jury in Magna Charta be ascribed to the Anglo-Saxons—viz., that it was one of the customs of the English people descended from the Anglo-Saxon period, confirmed by many subsequent charters, and enrolled in the great charter as part of the national constitution. To understand this it is indispensable to remember what the great charter was, and how little in reality the lower orders had to do with it. The struggle out of which it arose was not with them at all. It was a contest between the king and the barons, who set at naught his authority, who hanged his officers, and who rebelled against his outrages and abuses. It was they, the greatest enemies of the Anglo-Saxons, whose interest was in framing the laws so that they might ravage the common people with impunity, and at the same time escape similar treatment on the part of the king, who compelled the latter to sign Magna Charta. And so clearly were their interests opposed to the system of trial by jury, that it has been confidently asserted that the famous jury clause was due to the king himself. It seems more reasonable, however, to ascribe it to the archbishop and the clergy, by whom the document was undoubtedly drawn, and to whom its peculiar phraseology is undoubtedly due. But what is more credible, and, if true, more important, is the assertion on high authority that the words judicium parium, or judgment of peers, which are supposed to embody the great central principle of trial by jury, do not refer to
