Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 9.djvu/559

INJUNCTIONS AGAINST LIQUOR NUISANCES. 53I should a statute authorizing or directing such an enlargement of jurisdiction be held invalid. It was the system of equity as a whole, considered broadly with a view to its main fundamental principles, and with all its possibilities of legitimate development and growth in accordance with those principles, which was a part of the ** law of the land " contemplated by the Constitutions. But it by no means follows that equity can, with or without a statute, extend its jurisdiction without limit. Chancery is a civil, not a criminal court; a court for the protection of civil rights of property, using the term broadly, not for the prevention of assaults to the person, or for the enforcement of the police regulations of the State. These distinctions have always been fundamental. The chancellor cannot constitutionally enjoin the commission of a crime as such, without reference to its effect upon property rights, as a judge at circuit cannot constitutionally try a prisoner for murder without a jury. And statutes authorizing either would be equally invalid. In Massachusetts itself, in ordinary civil proceedings, it is settled that the court in exercising an equitable jurisdiction given it by statute must preserve the right to a jury trial as to all issues pre- viously so triable by the course of the common law. Thus in a statutory creditor's suit brought before judgment recovered at law, the defendant was held entitled to the verdict of a jury upon the issue of his indebtedness to the plaintiff. Field, J., says: — " It is plain that the question whether the Raymonds are indebted to the plaintiff for goods sold and dehvered is a controversy concerning property, which, when the Constitution was adopted, had been always tried by a jury in Massachusetts since the Province Charter, had been usually so tried before that charter, and had been so tried in England; that it is not a case in which a trial otherwise than by jury had thereto- fore been used and practised, or a case in its essential features unknown to the jurisprudence of the Province and the State at that time. The remedy which the plaintiff seeks is substantially the common law remedy. He seeks to establish his debt against the Raymonds, and to have it paid out of their property, which he alleges they have conveyed to Salmon by a conveyance which is fraudulent and void as to him. The rights sought to be determined and enforced are essentially legal, as distinguished from equitable rights. The statute has changed the mode of procedure, but it would be trifling with the Constitution to hold that, by changing the forms of procedure, the substantial rights declared by it can be taken away. In all controversies which are within the purview of that article of the Declaration of Rights, the 'method of procedure ' of a trial by