Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v3.djvu/547

.] there is no provision for peremptory challenges to juries There is no such provision made in our Constitution or laws The answer made by an honorable member lately is a full answer to this. He said, and with great propriety and truth, that where a technical word was used, all the incidents belonging to it necessarily attended it. The right of challenging is incident to the trial by jury, and therefore, as one is secured, so is the other. I hope gentlemen will see that the dangers he has pointed out do not necessarily follow.

, June 20, 1788.

Mr. MADISON. Mr. Chairman, permit me to make a few observations, which may place this part in a more favorable light than the gentleman placed it in yesterday. It may be proper to remark that the organization of the general government for the United States was, in all its parts, very difficult. There was a peculiar difficulty in that of the executive. Every thing incident to it must have participated in that difficulty. That mode which was judged most expedient was adopted, till experience should point out one more eligible. This part was also attended with difficulties. It claims the indulgence of a fair and liberal interpretation. I will not deny that, according to my view of the subject, a more accurate attention might place it in terms which would exclude some of the objections now made to it. But if we take a liberal construction, I think we shall find nothing dangerous or inadmissible in it. In compositions of this kind, it is difficult to avoid technical terms which have the same meaning. An attention to this may satisfy gentlemen that precision was not so easily obtained as may be imagined. I will illustrate this by one thing in the Constitution. There is a general power to provide courts to try felonies and piracies committed on the high seas. Piracy is a word which may be considered as a term of the law of nations. Felony is a word unknown to the law of nations, and is to be found in the British laws, and from thence adopted in the laws of these states. It was thought dishonorable to have recourse to that standard. A technical term of the law of nations is therefore used, that we should find ourselves authorized to introduce it into the laws of the United States. The first question which I shall consider is, whether the subjects of