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Defending the Constitution
secured by the Constitution only in criminal cases. 2d. That the appeal
from both law and fact is expressly established, which is utterly inconsistent with the principles of the common law and trials by jury. The only
mode in which an appeal from law and fact can be established, is by
adopting the principles and practice of the civil law, unless the United
States should be drawn into the absurdity of calling and swearing juries,
merely for the purpose of contradicting their verdicts, which would render juries contemptible and worse than useless. 3d. That the courts to be
established would decide on all cases of law and equity, which is a wellknown characteristic of the civil law, and these courts would have cognizance not only of the laws of the United States, and of treaties, and of
cases affecting ambassadors, but of all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction, which last are matters belonging exclusively to the civil law, in
every nation in Christendom.
Not to enlarge upon the loss of the invaluable right of trial by an unbiased jury, so dear to every friend of liberty, the monstrous expense and
inconveniences of the mode of proceeding to be adopted, are such as will
prove intolerable to the people of this country. The lengthy proceedings
of the civil law courts in the chancery of England, and in the courts of
Scotland and France, are such that few men of moderate fortune can endure the expense of them; the poor man must therefore submit to the
wealthy. Length of purse will too often prevail against right and justice.
For instance, we are told by the learned Judge Blackstone, that a question
only on the property of an ox, of the value of three guineas, originating
under the civil law proceedings in Scotland, after many interlocutory orders and sentences below, was carried at length from the court of sessions, the highest court in that part of Great Britain, by way of appeal to
the House of Lords, where the question of law and fact was finally determined. He adds that no pique or spirit could in the Court of King’s Bench
or Common Pleas at Westminster have given continuance to such a cause
for a tenth part of the time, nor have cost a twentieth part of the expense.
Yet the costs in the Courts of King’s Bench and Common Pleas in England are infinitely greater than those which the people of this country
have ever experienced. We abhor the idea of losing the transcendent
privilege of trial by jury, with the loss of which, it is remarked by the
same learned author, that in Sweden, the liberties of the commons were