The monarchs of the House of Tudor sent to prison jurors who refused to convict, and Napoleon caused them to be returned by his agents.
[Footnote f: [This may be true to some extent of special juries, but not of common juries.

The author seems not to have been aware that the qualifications of jurors in England vary exceedingly.]] [Footnote g: See Appendix, Q.] However clear most of these truths may seem to be, they do not command universal assent, and in France, at least, the institution of trial by jury is still very imperfectly understood.

If the question arises as to the proper qualification of jurors, it is confined to a discussion of the intelligence and knowledge of the citizens who may be returned, as if the jury was merely a judicial institution.

This appears to me to be the least part of the subject.

The jury is pre-eminently a political institution; it must be regarded as one form of the sovereignty of the people; when that sovereignty is repudiated, it must be rejected, or it must be adapted to the laws by which that sovereignty is established.
The jury is that portion of the nation to which the execution of the laws is entrusted, as the Houses of Parliament constitute that part of the nation which makes the laws; and in order that society may be governed with consistency and uniformity, the list of citizens qualified to serve on juries must increase and diminish with the list of electors.
This I hold to be the point of view most worthy of the attention of the legislator, and all that remains is merely accessory.
I am so entirely convinced that the jury is pre-eminently a political institution that I still consider it in this light when it is applied in civil causes.