Page:England's alarm!.djvu/20

[ 16 ] English law. As it has so great an advantage in regulating civil property, how much must that advantage be heightened, when it is applied to criminal cases! It is the most transcendent privilege which any subject can enjoy or wish for, that he cannot be affected either in his property, his liberty, or his person, but by the unanimous consent of twelve of his neighbours and equals. A Constitution that I may venture to affirm has, under providence, secured the just liberties of this nation for a long succession of ages, and therefore a celebrated French writer, who concludes, "that because Rome, Sparta, and Carthage have lost their liberties, therefore those in England in time must perish," should have recollected, that Rome, Sparta, and Carthage, at the time when their liberties were lost, were strangers to the trial by jury."

"It is a circumstance well worth an Englishman's observation, that in Sweden the trial by jury, that bulwark of northern liberty, which continued in its full vigour so lately as the middle of the last century, is