I have always understood that a superintendence over the doctrines as well as the proceedings of the courts of justice was a principal object of the constitution of this House,—­that you were to watch at once over the lawyer and the law,—­that there should be an orthodox faith, as well as proper works:  and I have always looked with a degree of reverence and admiration on this mode of superintendence.  For, being totally disengaged from the detail of juridical practice, we come something perhaps the better qualified, and certainly much the better disposed, to assert the genuine principle of the laws, in which we can, as a body, have no other than an enlarged and a public interest.  We have no common cause of a professional attachment or professional emulations to bias our minds; we have no foregone opinions which from obstinacy and false point of honor we think ourselves at all events obliged to support.  So that, with our own minds perfectly disengaged from the exercise, we may superintend the execution of the national justice, which from this circumstance is better secured to the people than in any other country under heaven it can be.  As our situation puts us in a proper condition, our power enables us to execute this trust.  We may, when we see cause of complaint, administer a remedy:  it is in our choice by an address to remove an improper judge, by impeachment before the peers to pursue to destruction a corrupt judge, or by bill to assert, to explain, to enforce, or to reform the law, just as the occasion and necessity of the case shall guide us.  We stand in a situation very honorable to ourselves and very useful to our country, if we do not abuse or abandon the trust that is placed in us.

The question now before you is upon the power of juries in prosecuting for libels.  There are four opinions:—­1.  That the doctrine as held by the courts is proper and constitutional, and therefore should not be altered; 2.  That it is neither proper nor constitutional, but that it will be rendered worse by your interference; 3.  That it is wrong, but that the only remedy is a bill of retrospect; 4.  The opinion of those who bring in the bill, that the thing is wrong, but that it is enough to direct the judgment of the court in future.

The bill brought in is for the purpose of asserting and securing a great object in the juridical constitution of this kingdom, which, from a long series of practices and opinions in our judges, has in one point, and in one very essential point, deviated from the true principle.

It is the very ancient privilege of the people of England, that they shall be tried, except in the known exceptions, not by judges appointed by the crown, but by their own fellow-subjects, the peers of that county court at which they owe their suit and service; and out of this principle the trial by juries has grown.  This principle has not, that I can find, been contested in any case by any authority whatsoever;