Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/311

Rh criminal matters at all—the decision in which was never termed judicium, but veridictum. So that the most that can with safety be asserted of these two famous words is this, that out of them was evolved the great principle which in after-years was to stand in the breach in many a bitter struggle between law and force, and to play so important a part in the history of civilization.

And indeed that is the light in which the whole of this great act is to be regarded. It is all of a piece with the judicium parium and habeas corpus clause, the assertion of the supremacy of law in all ranks and orders of society. Laws had existed before the time of John, but they were but additional instruments in the hands of the strong to oppress the weak. Under the Saxon kings the laws were neither understood nor regarded. Every man was a law unto himself, and the result was anarchy and barbarism.

Under the Norman kings law was recognized and partially understood, but it was enforced only against those least powerful to violate it. Each Norman king in turn granted and confirmed the laws to the people, but himself outraged every law, both human and divine. The feudal lords right nobly imitated their example; and, so great grew their exactions that, like the Hebrews of old, the people cried aloud for a deliverer. The deliverer came in the person of a king more sensual, more vile, and more tyrannical than any who had preceded him; a king who ground the faces of the rich as well as of the poor; who outraged the noble as well as the base-born; who oppressed the strong as well as the weak. And the rich and the noble and the strong stood up; the barons turned against the king, and the king against the barons, and out of the contest arose the supremacy of the law. Law became the sole arbiter of right and wrong among all classes, and force and violence and the savage instincts of man became subject thereto.

For upward of five centuries the principles of Magna Charta have governed the Anglo-Saxon world, and among them the principle of trial by jury has held its place. The tyranny of absolute monarchy is gone, and the brutality of the barons has long since passed away, but the jury system remains. Since the days of William HI, when the supremacy of the law was finally vindicated, and the judges were made independent of the crown, trial by jury has been little more than a form; yet English-speaking people everywhere cling to it as a lately bereaved wife clings to the form of him who through many long years has been her shield and protector.

In this age all men are peers and equals in the eyes of the law, yet a jury of twelve, with all its ancient crudities, and all its modern anomalies, is still considered essential to a fair and impartial trial.

Time was when the jury were judges of the law as well as the fact. To-day they are in fact judges of neither. They are but the echo of the court, and their principal office is to relieve the court of the