Opinion of the Court. action to recover damages in the sum of $300 from being tried by a jury before him. The petition for a writ of certiorari alleged that Charles Hof, on August 17, 1896, caused a summons to be issued by Lewis I. O'Neal, Esquire, one of the justices of the peace in and for the District of Columbia, summoning the Capital Traction Company to appear before him on August 20, 1896, "to answer unto the complaint of Charles Hof in a plea of damage of $300," and the matter was postponed until September 8, on which day, after the company had put in its plea, and issue had been joined thereon, the attorney for Hof demanded of the justice of the peace that the action should be tried by a jury, and thereupon the justice of the peace issued a venire to a constable, commanding him to summon twelve jurors to appear before said justice on September 10; that the petitioner was advised that such a demand for the so-called jury was founded upon sections 1009-1016 of the Revised Statutes of the District of Columbia, and was intended to subject the petitioner, without appeal, to a form of trial before a justice of the peace, unknown to the common law, and, as the petitioner was advised, illegal and unconstitutional; that the petitioner was informed and believed that Hof's claim was for damages sustained by him through its negligence, while he was a passenger on one of its cars; and that it had a good defence on the merits to his claim, and sought a fair opportunity to make such defence before an impartial tribunal, and was ready and willing to give any security that might be required for the prompt payment of any final judgment which might be pronounced against it in due course of law. The petition further averred that the only method in which Hof's claim against the petitioner could be tried by a jury according to the common law and the Constitution was by removing his suit from the justice of the peace into the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia; that if this was not done, the petitioner would be deprived of its constitutional right to a trial by jury, and would be in danger of being deprived of its property without due process of law, and would Opinion of the Court. be denied the equal protection of the laws; and that the amount claimed by Hof was within the jurisdiction of that court. Wherefore the petitioner prayed that a writ of certiorari might be issued to the justice of the peace to remove Hof's claim into that court for trial according to the course of the common law, upon such terms as to security for costs and damages as the court might think proper; and for such other and further relief as the petitioner might be entitled to. The Supreme Court of the District of Columbia granted a writ of certiorari to the justice of the peace, as prayed for; and the justice of the peace, in his return thereto, set forth the proceedings before him in the action of Hof against the Capital Traction Company, showing the issue and return of the summons to the defendant, its oral plea of not guilty, the plaintiff's joinder of issue and demand of a jury, and the stay of further proceedings by the writ of certiorari. On October 6, 1896, the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia overruled a motion of Hof to quash the writ of certiorari; and entered an order quashing all proceedings before the justice of the peace after issue joined. 24 Wash. Law Rep. 646. Hof appealed to the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia, which on February 17, 1897, reversed that order, and remanded the case with directions to quash the writ of certiorari. 10 App. D. C. 205. The Capital Traction Company thereupon sued out a writ of error from this court, under the act of February 9, 1893, c. 74, § 8. 27 Stat. 436. The petition for a writ of certiorari presents for determination a serious and important question of the validity, as well as the interpretation and effect, of the legislation of Congress conferring upon justices of the peace in the District of Columbia jurisdiction in civil actions in which the matter in dispute exceeds twenty dollars in value, and providing for a trial by a jury before the justice of the peace, an appeal from his judgment to the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, and a trial by jury, at the request of either party, in the appellate court. This court, therefore, has jurisdiction of the writ of error, Baltimore & Potomac Railroad v. Hopkins, Opinion of the Court. 130 U. S. 210, 224; Parsons v. District of Columbia, 170 U. S. 45. The Court of Appeals was unanimous in maintaining the validity of the proceedings looking to a trial by a jury before the justice of the peace. But there was a difference of opinion between the two associate justices and the chief justice upon the question whether such a trial before the justice of the peace would be a trial by jury, according to the common law and the Constitution; as well as upon the question whether the trial by jury, allowed by Congress in the Supreme Court of the District, upon appeal from the judgment of the justice of the peace, and upon the condition of giving bond to pay the final judgment of the appellate court, satisfied the requirements of the Constitution. I. The Congress of the United States, being empowered by the Constitution "to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever" over the seat of the National Government, has the entire control over the District of Columbia for every purpose of government, national or local. It may exercise within the District all legislative powers that the legislature of a State might exercise within the State; and may vest and distribute the judicial authority in and among courts and magistrates, and regulate judicial proceedings before them, as it may think fit, so long as it does not contravene any provision of the Constitution of the United States. Kendall v. United States, (1838) 12 Pet. 524, 619; Mattingly v. District of Columbia, (1878) 97 U. S. 687, 690; Gibbons v. District of Columbia, (1886) 116 U. S. 404, 407. It is beyond doubt, at the present day, that the provisions of the Constitution of the United States securing the right of trial by jury, whether in civil or in criminal cases, are applicable to the District of Columbia. Webster v. Reid, (1850) 11 How. 437, 460; Callan v. Wilson, (1888) 127 U. S. 540, 550; Thompson v. Utah, (1898) 170 U. S. 343. The decision of this case mainly turns upon the scope and effect of the Seventh Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. It may therefore be convenient, before particularly examining the acts of Congress now in question, to Opinion of the Court. refer to the circumstances preceding and attending the adop tion of this Amendment, to the contemporaneous understanding of its terms, and to the subsequent judicial interpretation thereof, as aids in ascertaining its true meaning, and its application to the case at bar. II. The first Continental Congress, in the Declaration of Rights adopted October 14, 1774, unanimously resolved that "the respective Colonies are entitled to the common law of England, and more especially to the great and inestimable privilege of being tried by their peers of the vicinage, according to the course of that law." 1 Journals of Congress, 28. The Ordinance of 1787 declared that the inhabitants of the Northwest Territory should "always be entitled to the benefits of the writ of habeas corpus, and of the trial by jury," "and of judicial proceedings according to the course of the common law." 1 Charters and Constitutions, 431. The Constitution of the United States, as originally adopted, merely provided in article 3, section 3, that "the trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be by jury.” In the Convention which framed the Constitution, a motion to add this clause, "and a trial by jury shall be preserved as usual in civil cases," was opposed by Mr. Gorham of Massachusetts, on the ground that "the constitution of juries is different in different States, and the trial itself is usual in different cases, in different States;" and was unanimously rejected. 5 Elliott's Debates, 550. Mr. Hamilton, in number 81 of the Federalist, when discussing the clause of the Constitution which confers upon this court "appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions and under such regulations as the Congress shall make," and again, in more detail, in number 83, when answering the objection to the want of any provision securing trial by jury in civil actions, stated the diversity then existing in the laws of the different States regarding appeals and jury trials; and especially pointed out that in the New England States, and in those alone, appeals were allowed, as of course, from one jury to another until there had been two verdicts on one side, and in no other State but Georgia was there any Opinion of the Court. appeal from one to another jury. The diversity in the laws of the several States, he insisted, "shows the impropriety of a technical definition derived from the jurisprudence of any particular State," and "that no general rule could have been fixed upon by the Convention which would have corresponded with the circumstances of all the States." And he suggested that "the legislature of the United States would certainly have full power to provide that in appeals to the Supreme Court there should be no reëxamination of facts where they had been tried in the original causes by juries;" but if this "should be thought too extensive, it might be qualified with a limitation to such causes only as are determinable at common law in that mode of trial." 2 Federalist, (ed. 1788) pp. 319321, 335, 336. At the first session of the first Congress under the Constitution, Mr. Madison, in the House of Representatives, on June 8, 1789, submitted propositions to amend the Constitution by adding, to the clause concerning the appellate jurisdiction of this court, the words, "nor shall any fact, triable by a jury, according to the course of the common law, be otherwise reexaminable than according to the principles of the common law," and, to the clause concerning trial by jury, these words: "In suits at common law, between man and man, the trial by jury, as one of the best securities to the rights of the people, ought to remain inviolate." 1 Annals of Congress, 424, 435. And those propositions, somewhat altered in form, were embodied in a single article, which was proposed by Congress on September 25, 1789, to the legislatures of the several States, and upon being duly ratified by them, became the Seventh Amendment to the Constitution, in these words: "In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved; and no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise reexamined, in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law." A comparison of the language of the Seventh Amendment, as finally made part of the Constitution of the United States, with the Declaration of Rights of 1774, with the Ordinance |