HKB
they do, they must necessarily find the party guilty, and leave the rest to the judge; and that they have nothing to do with the word felonice in the indictment?
The next point is to consider it as a question of constitutional policy, that is, whether the decision of the question of libel ought to be left to the judges as a presumption of law, rather than to the jury as matter of popular judgment, as the malice in the case of murder, the felony in the case of stealing. If the intent and tendency are not matters within the province of popular judgment, but legal and technical conclusions, formed upon general principles of law, let us see what they are. Certainly they are most unfavourable, indeed, totally adverse, to the Constitution of this country.