Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/627

 DEPARTMENTAL CONVENIENCE AND PUBLIC LOSS. 699* guaranteed in terms under Ethelred/^ — which did not sink with the fall of Harold, and was embodied in the Great Charter as the right of every freeman, in words which: the great Chatham pronounced worth all the classics, and the Bible of the English Constitution, — trial by jury in com- pleteness, — was thenceforward indefinitely taken from Englishmen in New South Wales. It is a proof of the sway of custom that no serious effort has been made to restore it. Neither responsible government, nor abuse of power by & government, has to this day roused the people of New South Wales to the evils they undergo by its loss. It is bad to lose a prime guarantee for due administration of the law ; it is worse that the people should not be trained from the highest to the lowest in the duty of administering it. The taint has spread downwards and numerous stipendiary magistrates have in great part extruded from petty sessions the unpaid magistrates who once distributed justice and friendly counsel to their neighbours. Ofl&cial routine has superseded union of feeling. A bond, which was as whole- some for the country gentleman in stirring his sym- pathies as it was for his poorer neighbours to profit by them, has been rent asunder by the craving for formality and the servility of a government depart- ment. But whether Forbes had or had not reason to be satisfied with the extinction of grand juries, there could be no doubt as to the destruction of his devices with regard to common juries at Courts of Quarter Sessions. The argu- ment with which he had overthrown the resistance of magistrates in 1824 — that as the Act of 1823 was silent the common law must be held to prevail — was in express words rendered impossible by the Act of 1828. The 17th super sanctuarium quod eis in manus datur, quod nolint ullum innocentem accusare, nee aliquem noxium celare" [circa an. 990]. Laws of Ethelred. The reader may find in the great work of Stubba how under the Norman line the liberties of England were guaranteed by successive kings. In 1194, by the Articles of Visitation, the recognitors (or grand jury) of presentment were specially described. Four knights were chosen from the county. They by their oath chose two lawful knights of each hundred or wapentake. The two so chosen, chose ten knights of each hundred or wapentake, ** or, if knights be wanting, legal or freemen," ** so that these twelve may answer under all heads concerning their whole hundred or wapentake." It was after the visitation of 1194 that the petty jury ta traverse the presentment of the grand jury caixv^ m.<i xafc«
 * ' "Exeant seniores duodecim thani, et prsefectus cum eis et jurent