When the king's justices were known to be so corrupt and servile that the people would not even trust them to sit alone, in jury trials, in civil actions, how preposterous is it to suppose that they would not only suffer them to sit, but to sit alone, in criminal ones.
Spooner critiques the reliability of justices in historical jury trials, emphasizing the need for oversight.
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It was a principle of the Common Law, as it is of the law of nature, and of common sense, that no man can be taxed without his personal consent.
There is no more absurdity in giving a jury a veto upon the laws, than there is in giving a veto to each of these other tribunals.
In nearly or quite all the States of the United States the juries are illegal, for one or the other of the same reasons that make the juries in England illegal.
The people considered their jurisprudence as a part of their inheritance.