1883.] HINTS TOWARD SMALL FARMNG. 267 



who can afford to leave their business to fill a panel. For many 

 cases of the first importance, a jury of twelve has been done away 

 with in practice already, and one of sis or three substituted. It 

 is easier, of course, to find three or six honest, intelligent, and just 

 men than it is to find twelve of them, and the lesser number is 

 more easily managed for dishonest purposes also. Possibly we are 

 growing reluctant to expose any more innocent people than is 

 absolutely necessary to the contaminating air of courts, made and 

 provided. 



The trouble with jury trials, by the way, comes not only from 

 a scarcity of good stock, but from the selfish machinery by which ■ 

 the jury may be chosen. The essence of a righteous jury system 

 consists in putting twelve upright men, twelve green fisher- 

 apostles with one traitor only, if you please, into the council of 

 case-hardened lawyers and judges. A jury should never be chosen 

 from an impecunious pack of court rats and hangers-on. We 

 want naturally shrewd, independent men, such as formerly grew 

 up on small farms, and not men specially conversant with the 

 tricks of courts. We would not select our wives in Utah for the 

 sake of having them much acquainted with matrimony. 



Complaint of juries, in the conflict between right and legality, 

 comes largely from the side of those who sympathize more with 

 corporate life than with family life. Corporate industry, as it has 

 been wickedly managed in this country, is the reckless destroyer, 

 instead of the supplement, of family industry. To say what can 

 be destroyed ought to be destroyed, and that better things for the 

 family may grow out of corporate endeavor are the principal argu- 

 ments in its favor. It is scarcely needful for me to hint that unjust 

 laws and judgments are fit to burn all small farming instincts from 

 the popular heart. 



Our Puritan forefathers ran away from bad laws quite as much 

 as they did from bad religions. 



Must I remind you of other unpleasant things to prove that our 

 population is or has very lately been deteriorating in quality ? 

 How often do you — competent managers — set two, three, four, or 

 five men to do one man's work, and then have to go and do it over 

 again yourself, or let the labor pass without being rightly done ? 



How many of us prepared the ground for sorne crop this year 

 and other years so unskillfuUy as to fail of gathering any harvest 

 to speak of ? 



