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is treated as such by Sir Thomas Smith, two hundred years ago, who "accounted such doings to be very violent, tyrannical, and contrary to the liberty and custom of the realm of England." For, as Sir Matthew Hale well observes, it would be a most unhappy case for the Judge himself, if the prisoner's fate depended upon his directions:—Unhappy also for the prisoner, for if the Judge's opinion must rule the verdict, the trial by jury would be useless.
In another place he says, "If judgments were to be the private opinions of the Judge, men would then be slaves to their magistrates."
Let me remind your Lordship, in addition to these authorities, of Junius's letter on this very great point. He says, "The doctrine constantly delivered in cases of libel, is another powerful evidence of a fettled plan to contract the legal power of juries, and to draw questions, inseparable from fact, within the arbitrium of the Court. Here, my Lord, you have fortune on your side. When a Judge invades the province of a jury, in mat-
