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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From the sale of that justice which every citizen has a right to demand, it was an easy transition to withhold or deny it.
Since Magna Carta, we have evidence showing quite conclusively that all freemen, above the age of twenty-one years, were eligible as jurors.
Juries would refuse to enforce a tax against a man who had never agreed to pay it.
The people considered their jurisprudence as a part of their inheritance.