Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v4.djvu/181

.] not have taken the trouble to make an addition of five or six lines, to secure the trial by jury in civil cases. Sir, it by the addition, not only of five or six lines, but of five or six hundred lines, this invaluable object could have been secured, I should have thought the Convention criminal in omitting it; and instead of meriting the thanks of their country, as I think they do now, they might justly have met with its resentment and indignation. I am persuaded the omission arose from the real difficulty of the case. The gentleman says that a mode might have been provided, whereby the trial by jury might have been secured satisfactorily to all the states. I call on him to show that mode. I know of none; nor do I think it possible for any man to devise one to which some states would not have objected. It is said, indeed, that it might have been provided that it should be as it had been heretofore. Had this been the case, surely it would have been highly incongruous.

The trial by jury is different in different states. It is regulated in one way in the state of North Carolina, and in another way in the state of Virginia. It is established in a different way from either in several other states. Had it, then, been inserted in the Constitution, that the trial by jury should be as it had been heretofore, there would have been an example, for the first time in the world, of a judiciary belonging to the same government being different in different parts of the same country. What would you think of an act of Assembly which should require the trial by jury to be had in one mode in the county of Orange, and in another mode in Granville, and in a manner different from both in Chatham? Such an act of Assembly, so manifestly injudicious, impolitic, and unjust, would be repealed next year.

But what would you say of our Constitution, if it authorized such an absurdity? The mischief, then, could not be removed without altering the Constitution itself. It must be evident, therefore, that the addition contended for would not have answered the purpose. If the method of any particular state had been established, it would have been objected to by others, because, whatever inconveniences it might have been attended with, nothing but a change in the Constitution itself could have removed them: whereas, as it is now, if any mode established by Congress is found inconvenient, it can easily be altered by a single act of