But the counsel of a juror is a different thing, it is the evidence, the motives and reasons that induce him or his fellow-jurors to say billa vera or ignoramus, and the opinion he or they happen to be of when the question is put by the foreman for finding or not finding:  This counsel every man is sworn to keep secret, that so their opinion and advice may not be of prejudice to them hereafter, That as they are sworn to act without favour or affection, so may they also act without FEAR.  Whereas, were it otherwise the spirit of revenge is so universal, there are but few cases wherein a juror could act with safety to himself; either the prosecuted, as where the bill is found, or the prosecutor, where it is returned ignoramus, may contrive to defame the jurors who differ from them in opinion:  As I am told has happened to some very honest citizens who are represented to be Jacobites since their opinions were know to be against ——.  And sometimes revenge or ambition may prompt men to carry it further, as in the case of Mr. Wilmer, who in King Charles 2d’s time was very severely handled for being one of an ignoramus jury.——­ ’Tis not necessary to say whom he disobliged by being so.——­But if I remember right his case was this.

He was a merchant, (and as I said, an ignoramus juryman) had covenanted with a servant boy to serve him in the West Indies, and accordingly sent him beyond sea:  Upon suggestion and affidavit by which any person might have it, a writ de homine replegiando was granted against Mr. Wilmer; the sheriffs would have returned on the writ the agreement and the boy’s consent, but the court (in the case of this Wilmer) Easter 34, Cha. 2. [i.e., Charles the Second] in B.R. ruled they must return replegiari fecimus or elongavit, that is, they had replevy’d the boy, or that Wilmer had carried him away where they could not find him, in which last case Mr. Wilmer, though an innocent person must have gone to gaol until he brought the boy into court or he must have been outlawed—­Shower’s Rep. 2 Part.

I do not say this that I think the same thing will be practised again, or anything like it, though I know that very homely proverb, “More ways of killing a dog than hanging him.”—­But I instance it to shew, the counsels of every grand juryman should be kept secret, that he may act freely and without apprehensions of resentment from the prosecuted or prosecutor.

My resolution when I writ to you last, was, not to have said anything in this concerning the power of dissolving or dispensing, but as I have been forced to say something of the dispensing, for the same reason I must of the dissolving power.—­A power undoubtedly in effect including that of returning, which makes me wish two men of great interest in this kingdom, differing in every other thing, had not undertaken to defend it, or they had better reasons for it than I have yet heard.