The Judiciary Continued in Relation to Trial by Jury
Hamilton: From McClean’s Edition , New York, Wednesday, May 28, 1788.
To the People of the State of New York:
The objection to the plan of the convention, which has met with most success in this state, and perhaps in several of the other states, is that relative to the want of a constitutional provision for the trial by jury in civil cases. The disingenuous form in which this objection is usually stated has been repeatedly adverted to and exposed, but continues to be pursued in all the conversations and writings of the opponents of the plan. The mere silence of the Constitution in regard to civil causes , is represented as an abolition of the trial by jury, and the declamations to which it has afforded a pretext are artfully calculated to induce a persuasion that this pretended abolition is complete and universal, extending not only to every species of civil, but even to criminal causes . To argue with respect to the latter would, however, be as vain and fruitless as to attempt the serious proof of the existence of matter , or to demonstrate any of those propositions which, by their own internal evidence, force conviction, when expressed in language adapted to convey their meaning.
With regard to civil causes, subtleties almost too contemptible for refutation have been employed to countenance the surmise that a thing which is only not provided for , is entirely abolished . Every man of discernment must at once perceive the wide difference between silence and abolition . But as the inventors of this fallacy have attempted to support it by certain legal maxims of interpretation, which they have