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¬because it appeared to parliament, that it never had been ; nor reasonably could be, any part of the judicial office, to judge on subjects as law- yers where the law could give them no possible rule to go by, or to exercise a boundless and dangerous dominion over the free thoughts and opinions of mankind, when no individual com- plained that his character had been invaded. ¬One would have thought it must have been held to be a mere corollary to such a proposi- tion, that a jurisdiction thus taken from the superior judges could not remain with the infe- rior magistrates, even if it had been vested in them before ; and that it never could have been thought just, nor in England practicable, to sti- mulate the most unlettered justices, without the aid of legal advisers, to act, perhaps beyond the dictates of their own opinions upon questions which no court in England, without the con- currence of a jury, could decide. — One would have thought that upon any sound construction of this modern statute, whatever might have been the practice of former times, a jurisdiction ¬to ¬
