263.
The nation began to apprehend that they intended to establish themselves as a perpetual legislature, and to confine the whole power to sixty or seventy persons, who called themselves the parliament of the commonwealth of England.

And while they pretended to bestow new liberties upon the nation, they found themselves obliged to infringe even the most valuable of those which, through time immemorial, had been transmitted from their ancestors.

Not daring to intrust the trials of treason to juries, who, being chosen indifferently from among the people, would have been little favorable to the commonwealth, and would have formed their verdict upon the ancient laws, they eluded that noble institution, by which the government of this island has ever been so much distinguished.

They had evidently seen in the trial of Lilburn what they could expect from juries.

This man, the most turbulent, but the most upright and courageous of human kind, was tried for a transgression of the new statute of treasons: but though he was plainly guilty, he was acquitted, to the great joy of the people.