tion, that in Sweden the trial by jury, that bulwark of Northern liberty, which continued in its full vigor so lately as the middle of the last century, is now fallen into disuse; and that there, though the regal power is in no country so closely limited, yet the liberties of the commons are extinguished, and the government is degenerated into a mere aristocracy. IT IS THEREFORE, UPON THE WHOLE, A DUTY WHICH EVERY MAN OWES TO HIS COUNTRY, HIS FRIENDS, HIS POSTERITY, AND HIMSELF, TO MAINTAIN TO THE UTMOST OF HIS POWER THIS VALUABLE CONSTITUTION IN ALL ITS RIGHTS TO RESTORE IT TO ITS ANCIENT DIGNITY, IF AT

ALL IMPAIRED by the different value of property, or otherwise deviated from its first institution; TO AMEND IT WHEREVER IT IS DEFECTIVE; AND ABOVE ALL, TO GUARD WITH THE MOST ZEALOUS CIRCUMSPECTION AGAINST THE INTRODUCTION OF NEW AND ARBITRARY METHODS OF TRIAL, WHICH, UNDER A VARIETY OF PLAUSIBLE PRETENCES, MAY IN TIME IMPERCEPTIBLY UNDERMINE THIS BEST PRESERVATIVE OF ENGLISH LIBERTY." (BLACKSTONE, vol. iii. p. 378–381.)

II. Despotism, as we have said, has little partiality for juries; and when royalty in Engand failed to crush out the free spirit of the people, and to sweep away the safeguard of the ordinary jury trial, it availed itself of the tyrant's ever ready and generally plausible plea-necessity—to erect a court which should be wholly in the royal interests, and utterly subservient to the crown. This court was the High Court of Star Chamber-an institution which from the reign of Charles I. has had no parallel in England or America, until, in 1861, a Secretary of State of these United States assumed to concentrate its powers in his own person-powers so monstrous, so iniquitous, so utterly repugnant to the plainest principles of justice, that their exercise conduced in no small degree to bring about that revolution which brought Charles I. to the block; whose exercise in France produced the scathing whirlwind of another and more bloody revolution; which here in these United States OUR SECRETARIES WOULD DO WELL TO LAY ASIDE.

The Star Chamber is said to have been in early times one of the apartments of the king's palace at Westminster allotted for the despatch of public business. The Painted Chamber, the White

Chamber, and the Chambre Markolph were occupied by the triers and receivers of petitions, and the king's council held its sittings in the Camera Stellata, or Chambre des Estoylles, which was so called probably from some remarkable feature in its architecture or embellishment.

"The lords sitting in the Star Chamber" is used as a wellknown phrase in records of the time of Edward III., and the name, becoming permanently attached to the jurisdiction, continued long after the local situation of the court was changed. The judicature of the court of Star Chamber appears to have originated in the exercise of a criminal and civil jurisdiction by the king's council, or by that section of it which Lord Hale calls the Consilium Ordinarium, in order to distinguish it from the Privy Council, who were the deliberative advisers of the crown. (HALE's Jurisdiction of the Lords' House, ch. v.; PALGRAVE's Essay on the Original Authority of the King's Council.) The exercise of jurisdiction by the king's council was considered as an encroachment upon the common law, and being the subject of frequent complaint by the Commons, was greatly abridged by several acts of Parliament in the reign of Edward III. It was discouraged also by the common law judges, although they were usually members of the council; and from the joint operation of these, and some other causes, the power of the Concilium Regis as a court of justice had materially declined previously to the reign of Henry VII, although, as Lord Hale observes, there remain "some straggling footsteps of their proceedings "till near that time.

The statute of the 3d Henry VII. c. i. empowered the chancellor, treasurer, and keeper of the privy seal, or any two of them, calling to them a bishop and temporal lord of the council and the two chief justices, or two other justices in their absence (to whom the president of the council was subsequently added), upon bill or information exhibited to the lord chancellor or any other, against any person for maintenance, giving of liveries, and retainers by indentures or promises, or other embraceries, untrue demeanings of sheriffs in making panels and other untrue returns, for taking of money by juries, or for great riots or other unlawful assemblies, to call the offenders before them and examine them, and punish them accord

ing to their demerits. The object and effect of this enactment are extremely doubtful. It appears to have been the opinion of the courts of law at the time the statute was passed that it established a new jurisdiction entirely distinct from the ordinary jurisdiction of the council; for, five years afterward, it was resolved by all the judges, according to the plain words of the law, that the only judges of the court under the statute were the lord chancellor, the treasurer, and the keeper of the privy seal, the bishop and temporal lord being merely "called to them " as assistants or assessors, and not as constituent members of the court. This view of the effect of the statute is confirmed by the fact that, more than forty years afterward the president of the council was expressly added to the judges of the court; "a decisive proof," as Mr. Hallam observes, that it then existed as a tribunal perfectly distinct from the council itself.

However this may have been, there is no doubt that previously to the time of Coke, this court, whether distinct, or only a modification of the ancient jurisdiction, had again so completely merged in the general jurisdiction of the lords of the council, as to justify his statement that the opinion expressed in the judicial resolution was "contrary to continual experience." Sir Thomas Smith, who wrote his "Treatise on the Commonwealth of England," in the year 1565, makes no mention of a limited court, though he treats particularly of the court of Star Chamber, and says that the judges were the lord chancellor, the lord treasurer, all the king's council, and all peers of the realm; and he ascribes the merit of having renewed the vigor of the court to Cardinal Wolsey. At the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth, therefore, the court of Star Chamber was unquestionably in full operation, in the form in which it was known in the succeeding reigns; and at this period, before it had degenerated into a mere engine of state, it at least appeared to be by no means destitute of utility. It was professedly the only court in the land in which great and powerful offenders had no means of setting at defiance the administration of justice, or of corrupting its course. And during the reign of Elizabeth, when the jurisdiction of the Star Chamber had reached its maturity, it seems, except in political cases, to have been administered with wisdom and

discretion. In trials having any political tendency, it is needless to observe that this court never was, nor indeed, could be equitable in its jurisdiction.

The proceedings in the court of Star Chamber were by information, or bill and answer; interrogatories in writing were also exhibited to the defendant and witnesses, which were answered on oath. The attorney-general had the power of exhibiting ex-officio informations; as had also the king's almoner to recover deodands and goods of a felo-de-se, which were supposed to go in support of the king's alms. In cases of confession by accused persons, the information and proceedings were oral; and hence arose one of the most oppressive abuses of the court in political persecutions. The proceeding by written information and interrogatories was tedious and troublesome, often involving much nicety in pleading, and always requiring a degree of precision in setting forth the accusation, which was embarrassing in a state prosecution. It was with a view to these difficulties that Lord Bacon, on one occasion, discouraged the king from adopting this mode of proceeding, saying that "the Star Chamber, without confession, was long seas." In political charges, therefore, the attorney-general derived a great advantage over the accused by proceeding ore tenus. The consequence was, that no pains were spared to procure confessions, and pressure of every kind, including torture, was unscrupulously applied. According to the laws of the court, no person could be orally charged, unless he acknowledged his confession at the bar, "freely and voluntarily, without constraint." But this check upon confessions improperly obtained, seems to have been much neglected in practice during the later periods of the history of this court. "Therein," says Hudson, writing in the reign of James I., "there is sometimes dangerous excess; for, whereas the delinquent confesseth the of fence, sub modo, the same is strained against him to his great disadvantage. Sometimes many circumstances are pressed and urged to aggravate the matters which are not confessed by the delinquent, which surely ought not to be urged, but what he did freely confess, and in the same manner. And happy were it if these might be restrained within their limits, for that this course of proceeding is an exuberancy of prerogative, and, therefore, great reason to keep

it within the circumference of its own orb." Upon admissions of immaterial circumstances, thus aggravated and distorted into confessions of guilt, the Earl of Northumberland was prosecuted ore tenus in the Star Chamber, for being privy to the gunpowder plot, and was sentenced to pay a fine of £30,000, and to be imprisoned. for life, "but by what rule," says Hudson, "that sentence was, I know not, for it was ore tenus, and yet not upon confession." And it frequently happened during the last century of the existence of the Star Chamber, that enormous fines, imprisonments for life, or during the king's pleasure, banishment, mutilation, and every variation of punishment short of death, were inflicted by a court composed of members of the king's council, upon a mere oral proceeding, without hearing the accused, without a written charge or record of any kind, and without appeal.

The civil jurisdiction of the Star Chamber comprehended mercantile controversies between English and foreign merchants, testamentary causes, and differences between the heads and commonalty of corporations, both lay and spiritual. The court also disposed of the claims of the king's almoner to deodands, as above referred to, and also such claims as were made by subjects to deodands and the goods of convicted felons, by virtue of charters from the crown. The criminal jurisdiction of the court was very extensive. If the king chose to remit the capital punishment, the court had jurisdiction to punish as crimes even treason, murder, and felony. Under the comprehensive name of contempts of the king's authority, all offences against the state were included, forgery, perjury, riots, maintenance, embracery, fraud, libels, conspiracy, and false accusation: misconduct by judges, justices of the peace, sheriffs, jurors, and other persons connected with the administration of justice, were all punishable in the Star Chamber.

A court of criminal judicature, composed of the immediate agents of prerogative, possessing a jurisdiction very extensive, and at the same time imperfectly defined, and authorized to inflict any amount of punishment short of death, must, even when best administered, have always been viewed with apprehension and distrust; and accordingly in the earlier periods of its history we find constant remonstrances by the commons against its encroach