tolerate the illegality of our judgments, but whether we have a
right to substitute our occasional opinion in the place of law, so
as to deprive the citizen of his franchise.



SPEECH ON THE POWERS OF JURIES IN PROSECUTIONS FOR LIBELS
MARCH, 1771



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 he 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 to 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 honour, 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