Butler’s bill is, that it provides no penalty whatever for any one who shall abuse, or fraudulently use, the dangerous authority which it gives.

It furnishes endless temptations and facilities for committing wrong; it imposes no restraints; it warns by no threats of retribution.

Can any opinion be so false to the constitution, as this bill to humanity?

My ideas of duty require me to seek anxiously for the true interpretation of the constitution, and then to abide by it, unswayed by hopes or fears.

If the constitution requires me to do any thing which my sense of duty forbids, I shall save my conscience by resigning my office.

I wish, however, to remark, that though I acknowledge the constitution to be my guide while under oath to support it, yet I do not relish this fling either at the powers above us, or at those who reverence them.

I hold it to be not only proper, but proof of sound moral and religious feeling, to look to the perfect law of God for light to enable us more justly to interpret the imperfect laws of man.

Especially, when we are proposing to make or amend a law, ought we to take our gauge of purpose and of action from the highest standard.

The law of Nature,” says Blackstone, “being coeval with mankind, and dictated by God himself, is, of course, superior in obligation to any other.

That must necessarily be adjudged a cruel law, which augments slavery, and diminishes liberty.

For human nature implores, without ceasing, for liberty.

Slavery is introduced by man, and through his vice.

Wherefore, when torn from a man, it ever yearns to return; and it is the same with every thing when deprived of its natural liberty.

On this account, that man is to be adjudged cruel, who does not favor liberty.

By these considerations the laws of England, in every case, give favor to liberty.

In controversies respecting property, and in suits between man and man, the ancient trial by jury is preferable to any other, and ought to be held sacred.

Congress, indeed, might fail to perform its duty; but in such case, no provisions of the constitution, however express and peremptory, would secure the rights of the people.

And what is the seventh amendment but a “declaratory and restrictive clause,” securing the trial by jury, in cases at common law, “where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars,” and abandoning it where the value is less?

The phraseology of the amendment is full of significance: “The right of trial by jury shall be preserved.” Not created, but preserved.

The great men who submitted this seventh amendment to the states, treated the trial by jury, in civil cases, as a then subsisting constitutional right.

They passed a law to put the practical enjoyment of this right into the hands of the people, well knowing that there is scarcely a right which we hold under the constitution which we can beneficially possess or use, without the…

Suppose this seventh amendment had never been adopted, on what ground would the trial by jury, in civil cases, have rested up to the present day?

Feeble and humble as I am, great and formidable as he is, I join issue with him on this momentous question, and put myself upon the country.

Our constitution, as the present generation has always been taught, yearns towards liberty and the rights of man.

The trial by jury, in the important cases of life, liberty, and property, is essential to these rights.