Note 83 — Chapter VI

Suppose these statutes, instead of disfranchising all whose freeholds were of less than the standard value fixed by the statutes, had disfranchised all whose freeholds were of greater value than the same standard—would anybody ever have doubted that such legislation was inconsistent with the English constitution; or that it amounted to an entire abolition of the trial by jury? Certainly not. Yet it was as clearly inconsistent with the common law, or the English constitution, to disfranchise those whose freeholds fell below any arbitrary standard fixed by the government, as it would have been to disfranchise all whose freeholds rose above that standard.