extent, yet of considerable local importance, was effected by the statute 4 & 5 Will. IV. c. 27, being " An Act for the better administration of justice in certain boroughs and franchises."

The statute 6 Geo. IV. c. 50, settled and regulated the law and practice relating to JURIES. It repeals all former statutes, and declares that all persons between the ages of twenty-one and sixty, who shall have 107. a year, beyond reprises, in lands and tenements of freehold, copyhold or customary tenure, or in ancient demesne, or in rents issuing out of such tenements, in fee simple, fee tail, or for life, or 20%. a year in leaseholds, held for twenty-one years or any longer term, or any term determinable on a life or lives, or, being a householder, shall be rated to the poor-rate, or, in Middlesex, to the house duty, in a value of not less than 30%., or who shall occupy a house containing not less than fifteen windows, shall be qualified and liable to serve on all juries for the trial of all issues joined in the superior courts of Westminster, and in all courts of assize, nisi prius, &c., such issues being triable in the county where he resides.

In Wales, the qualification required amounts to threefifths of such properties.

In the CITY OF LONDON, a juror must be a resident within the city, and possess property to the value of 100%.

The various grounds of exemption from serving on juries are distinctly pointed out in the second section of the act.

A juror must be a natural-born subject, (except only when a foreigner is put on his trial), and not have been attainted of treason or felony, or convicted of an infa

mous crime, and not pardoned, nor be under sentence of outlawry or excommunication.

The jurors' book is kept by the sheriff; it contains a list of all persons within his county duly qualified for the office, and from this he returns what is denominated the common jury. It also contains a list of what is termed the special jury; which consists of all persons described as of the degree of an esquire, or of any superior rank, or as a banker or merchant.

Having thus shewn the great and important changes that have been made in the administration of criminal justice, the reader is requested only to look back from these enlightened times to the dark ages, and even to the middle and end of only the last century, and he must be gratified in seeing the mildness with which criminal justice is now administered, compared with its sanguinary administration in those times.

When Solon abrogated Draco's statutes, (which inflicted the penalty of death for all offences), and decreed that no offence but murder should be punished capitally, crime greatly diminished. Let us quit Athens, and go to ancient Rome, and the same result will be found to attend the abrogation of the sanguinary punishments that were decreed by the laws of the Roman kings, and the twelve tables of the Decemviri. This was silently effected by the Porcian law, which exempted all citizens from the punishment of death (1). During the last century, important mitigations have been effected in the criminal laws of civilized nations; and in many, the punishment of death has been abolished, almost in all cases, without any increase of crime being the conse

(1) See Livy, lib. 1.

T

quence; as, for instance, in Belgium and Tuscany, capital punishments have been practically abolished. In France, the Code Napoleon makes only six offences capital; and since 1830 further mitigation has taken place. In Austria, only traitors and murderers are punished with death. In Prussia and Holland, and in the United States of America, but few crimes are punished with death, and society suffers no injury.

The punishment of death is intended as an example to deter others from committing the same crime; whereas undetected criminals never apply the example to themselves. Sir W. Blackstone, in his work "On Crimes and Punishments," enforces the doctrines, that unduly severe punishments must always be uncertain, and therefore less fitted to deter men from the commission of offences, than milder but more certain penalties; and that the reformation of society will be much less effectually promoted by the enactment of such rigorous laws, as may inspire horror of the punishment of offences, than by educating the people in such a manner as to inspire them with horror of the offences themselves.

BOOK II.

CHAPTER I.

Advantages peculiar to the English Constitution. 1. The Unity of the Executive Power.

195 WE have seen in former chapters the resources allotted to the different parts of the English government for balancing each other, and how their reciprocal actions and re-actions produce the freedom of the constitution, which is no more than an equilibrium between the ruling powers of the state. I now propose to show that the particular nature and functions of these same constituent parts of the government, which give it so different an appearance from that of other free states, are moreover attended with peculiar and very great advantages, which have not hitherto been sufficiently observed.

The first peculiarity of the English government, as a free government, is its having a king,-its having thrown into one place the whole mass, if I may use the expression, of the executive power, and having invariably and for ever fixed it there. By this very circum

stance also has the depositum of it been rendered sacred and inexpugnable;-by making one great, very great man in the state, has an effectual check been put to the pretensions of those who otherwise would strive to become such; and disorders have been prevented, which, in all republics, ever brought on the ruin of liberty, and, before it was lost, obstructed the enjoyment of it.

If we cast our eyes on all the states that ever were free, we shall see that the people ever turning their jealousy, as it was natural, against the executive power, but never thinking of the means of limiting it that has so happily taken place in England (a), never employed any other expedients besides the obvious one of trusting that power to magistrates whom they appointed annually; which was in great measure the same as keeping 197 the management of it to themselves: whence it resulted, that the people, who, whatever may be the frame of the government, always possess, after all, the reality of power, thus uniting in themselves with this reality of power the actual exercise of it, in form as well as in fact, constituted the whole state. In order, therefore, legally to disturb the whole state, nothing more was requisite than to put in motion a certain number of individuals.

In a state which is small and poor, an arrangement of this kind is not attended with any great inconveniences, as every individual is taken up with the care of providing for his subsistence, as great objects of am

(a) The rendering that power dependent on the people for its supplies. (See book ic. 6).