I will now tell you what I do not like. First, the omission of a bill of rights, providing clearly and without the aid of sophism for freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against standing armies, restriction of monopolies, the eternal and unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury in all matters of fact triable by the laws of the land and not by the laws of nations. To say, as Mr. Wilson does, that a bill of rights was not necessary because all is reserved in the case of the general government, which is not given, while in the particular ones, all is given which is not reserved, might do for the audience to which it was addressed, but it is surely a gratis dictum [a mere assertion], the reverse of which might just as well be said; and it is opposed by strong inferences from the body of the instrument as well as from the omission of the clause of our present Confederation, which had made the reservation in express terms.
It was hard to conclude because there has been a want of uniformity among the states as to the cases triable by jury, because some have been so incautious as to dispense with this mode of trial in certain cases, therefore, the more prudent states shall be reduced to the same level of calamity. It would have been much more just and wise to have concluded the other way, that as most of the states had preserved with jealousy this sacred palladium of liberty, those who had wandered should be brought back to it; and to have established general right rather than general wrong. For I consider all the ill as established which may be established. I have a right to nothing which another has a right to take away; and Congress will have a right to take away trials by jury in all civil cases. Let me add that a bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular; and what no just government should refuse or rest on inference.
