of law are no longer the temple of justice, but the amphitheatre for
gladiators. No--God forbid! Juries ought to take their law from
the bench only; but it is our business that they should hear nothing
from the bench but what is agreeable to the principles of the
Constitution. The jury are to hear the judge, the judge is to hear
the law where it speaks plain; where it does not, he is to hear the
legislature. As I do not think these opinions of the judges to be
agreeable to those principles, I wish to take the only method in
which they can or ought to be corrected, by bill.

Next, my opinion is, that it ought to be rather by a bill for
removing controversies than by a bill in the state of manifest and
express declaration, and in words de praeterito. I do this upon
reasons of equity and constitutional policy. I do not want to
censure the present judges. I think them to be excused for their
error. Ignorance is no excuse for a judge: it is changing the
nature of his crime--it is not absolving. It must be such error as
a wise and conscientious judge may possibly fall into, and must
arise from one or both these causes: first, a plausible principle
of law; secondly, the precedents of respectable authorities, and in
good times. In the first, the principle of law, that the judge is
to decide on law, the jury to decide on fact, is an ancient and
venerable principle and maxim of the law, and if supported in this
application by precedents of good times and of good men, the judge,
if wrong, ought to be corrected; he ought not to be reproved, or to
be disgraced, or the authority or respect to your tribunals to be
impaired. In cases in which declaratory bills have been made, where
by violence and corruption some fundamental part of the Constitution
has been struck at; where they would damn the principle, censure the
persons, and annul the acts; but where the law having been, by the