Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/217

1765] Extension of Admiralty jurisdiction. 185 beyond its ancient limits, have a manifest tendency to subvert the rights and liberties of the colonists." "Trial by jury is the inherent and invaluable right of every British subject in these colonies." Trial by jury in these cases of the revenue so said the address to the King, on the same occasion is a security against the arbitrary decisions of the executive. His Majesty's subjects in America are required to submit to the determination of a single judge, in a Court not restrained by the wise rules of the common law, the birthright of Englishmen and the safeguard of their persons and property. The colonies have the misfortune to find, said the address to the House of Commons, that all the penalties and forfeitures mentioned in the Stamp Act and other late Acts are, at the election of the informers, recoverable in any Court of Admiralty in America. A newly-elected Court of Admiralty has general jurisdiction over all British America, so that his Majesty's subjects are liable to be carried at the greatest expense from one end of the continent to the other. It is painful to see such a distinction made between the subjects of England and the colonies; there the like penalties and forfeitures are recoverable only in his Majesty's Courts of Record (i.e. the common law Courts). Individual leaders also took part in the matter, in newspapers and pamphlets. Governor Hopkins dwelt upon the territorial extension of jurisdiction. Goods lawfully imported may now be seized in Georgia and carried to Halifax, for trial there ; and if the judge can be prevailed upon to certify that there was probable cause for the seizure, the unhappy owner, if he has followed his goods, may return to Georgia quite ruined. The power given to Courts of Admiralty, said Thacher, who with Otis had argued against the writs of assistance, alarms the people. The common law is the birthright of every subject; trial by jury is a darling privilege. It was so long before the colonies were planted; our ancestors had many struggles against attempts of the Court of Admiralty to inundate the land. What chance has the subject for his rights when the judge is to have a hundred or perhaps five hundred pounds for condemning, and less than twenty shillings upon an acquittal the judge too acting alone, without a jury? Worse than that, the seizor may at his pleasure inform in any Court of Admiralty in the particular colony, or wherever in America a Court may sit. Thus a malicious seizor may take any man's goods, however lawfully imported, and carry the trial a thousand miles away, and the owner shall lose his right from sheer inability to follow. The Act of Parliament makes other distinctions. In Great Britain no jurisdiction is given to any other than the common law Courts ; and there the subject is near the throne, and can soon be heard. In England the officer seizes goods at his peril ; if the goods are not liable to forfeiture, the seizor must pay the claimant his costs, and is besides liable to an action for damages. CH. VI.