This is done to prevent the government's constituting a jury of its own partisans or friends; in other words, to prevent the government's packing a jury, with a view to maintain its own laws, and accomplish its own purposes.
Spooner warns against governments manipulating jury selection to favor their own interests.
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And nobody is bound to take the least notice of them, unless it be to trample them under foot, as usurpations.
Since Magna Carta, we have evidence showing quite conclusively that all freemen, above the age of twenty-one years, were eligible as jurors.
The presumption clearly is that all were eligible.
In that case the trial is really a trial by the government, and not by the jury.