Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 8.djvu/79

Rh a Senate and a House of Representatives, each to aid and check the other. If a bill pass one house, and seem unjust to the other, it is set aside. If both approve of it, a third person has still a qualified negative; and if it seems unjust to him, he sets it aside. If it passes this threefold ordeal, it becomes a statute of the land. See the checks in the execution of the laws which relate to offences. Before they can be brought against any man, in any matter beyond a trifle, a jury of his peers indict him for the offence. Then, before he can be punished, twelve men of his peers must say with one accord, “You shall inflict the penalties of the statute upon this man.”

This trial by jury has long been regarded as one of the most important of the secondary safeguards of society. It has served to defend the community against bad citizens, and the citizens against an evil establishment—bad institutions, bad constitutions, bad statutes; against evil officers—bad rulers, bad judges, bad sheriffs. If the community has much to fear from bad citizens, here is the offensive armour, and the jury do not bear the sword in vain. If its citizens have much to fear from a wicked government, oppressive, grasping, tyrannical, desirous of pretending law where there is none, declaring “ship-money” and other enormities constitutional, or pressing a legal statute beyond justice, making it treason to tell of the wickedness of officers—here is the defensive armour, and the jury do not bear in vain the shield of the citizen. Sometimes the citizens have more to fear from the government than from all other foes. Louis XIV. was a great robber, and plundered and murdered more of his subjects than all the other alleged felons in the sixteen millions of Frenchmen. The honest burghers of Paris had more to fear from the monarch in the Tuileries than from the murderer in the Faubourg St. Antoine, or the cut-purse in the Rue St. Jacob. Charles I. was a more dangerous enemy to our fathers in England and America than all the other thieves and murderers in the realm. What were all the Indians in New England, for peril to its Christian citizens, compared to Charles II. and his wicked brother? What was a foot-pad to Henry VIII.? He plundered a province, while the robber only picked a pocket.

The trial by jury has done manly service. It was one