Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1857-03-31
From the Boston Telegraph of Feb, as, 1856.
Thu RinI,n nf II rSnI IL Iunr

To the Editor Of the Boston Telegraph "A
people not jealous of their rights, is sure to
lose them. They are always easier lost than
regained. Despotism is the last power to go
to sleep, and the first to strangle liberty in her
easy slumber. If the stealthy step OF tyran-
ny, walking i'll darkness, should be listened
to with a wakeful ear, its stride and tramp at
noon day, should be driven back with sud
den violence. The present is no time for
trihing. Despotism is everywhere busy and
freedom must be on the alert, or be caught in
tolls she can neither cast off nor break thro'.
Let the people never forget that the loss of one
right makes way for the departure of the
many.
The people can hardly be too sensitive re-
specting the sacred right Of trial By jury, as
distinct from the despotic notion and claim of
trial by the court. 10 be tenacious of its in
volatility, is the prime political lesson of the
fathers, inculcated in all their history. The
Bill of Rights of this Commonwealth is care
full to declare, in express terms, the right of
"triGI By jury for public offences and not
less careful to Withhold all allowance, or init
nation Of allowance, of trial By the court.
The jury may have, and should have, at least
in difficult if not in ordinary matters, the
judgment or opinion, not to say the ruling of
the court, as to what the law is: and it is
their privilege to ask of the court, if need be,
such aid as its learning, wisdom, and skill
may impart. To give such aid is the province
OF the court i'll such matters-a province to be
greatly respected III the full scope of its con-
stitutional limits, but no farther. When the
court has shed its best light on the path of the
jury, it is the province of the latter to deter
mine whether it leads safely, or misleads.
The jury are, indeed, soemnly bound to try
the cause committed to them for a verdict,
atprtg6tiy-- according to their best ability and
understanding but they may not abdieate
and transfer to other hands that which is ex
clusively entrusted to their own. Whatever
may be the opinion of the court, as distinct
from that of the jury, it is of no higher au-
thority, at last, than that of its reasons as
seen by the latter after due attention and de-
liberation for the Bill of Rights most plainly
declares, that the final judgment between the
Commonwealth and its subject, shall be '.tAe
judgment Of his peers"
When the Bill of Rights declared that ,tthe
legislature shall not make any law that shall
subject any person to capital or infamous
punIshment--withou trial by jury, it was not
careful to define the meaning of these terms !;
for nothing was then better understood both
by the convention which framed the Bill of
Rights, and the people who established it.
| lative enactment, or judicial construction of
it, can either abrogate, or in the least degree
abridge, its original essential import. When
the present. or any future Legislature shall have
done its utmost to vacate or curtail the right
Of trial by jury, as held, cherished, and es-
tablished, by the fathers it will be the right
and duty of their children to disregard and
| trample down such legislation, even though it
| be upheld by the solemn adjudication OF
courts for constitutional rights are above leg
islation and higher than the supremacy OIL
| dicial tribunals. If anything was meant to
| betixed and permanent, it was this guaranty
! of the hereditary, time-hallowed right of
HTRlAL BY JURY
| What the eimport of this constitutional
| guaranty was, and is, can now be ascertaned
| only by the known use of the term trial by
| j,lry, at the period when, and among the PEG.
| pie, by whom the Bill OF Rights was estab-
-lished. Ii, however, the proper native force
of the terms themselves, and the ancestral,
hereditary use Of them for centuries before the
adoption Of the Bill Of Rights by the people
| Of Massachusetts, both concur with the prev
| aent aud customary use of them at the period
| Of their adoption in said bill as the sense and
will of the people and if, moreover, such use
had been strenuously and perseverngly con-
tended for, and maintained by the people of
the colonies, against the assumption of Royal
Magistrates, and other agents Of the Crown.
then is the constitutional meaning of such
terms confirmed aud settled by their own in
trinsic weight, and the steady pressure of unit
ed Colonies, resolved to Tx sure foundation
for the liberties Of all their children to rest
upon. .o.
just such is the concurrssce that renders
certain and indubitabe tho meaning of the
terms "triat 6yJwy," SO carefully woven int }