298- THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



sibility of what is done. When a judge sentences a prisoner, he says, 

 in effect : " Do not blame me, I pray you. You have been condemned 

 by the ' unanimous ' verdict of twelve of your fellows. I am but the 

 mouth-piece of the law to pass sentence according to their verdict." Of 

 course this is not so. In a great proportion of cases the very reverse 

 is the case. The jury are, in fact, but the mouth-piece of the judge 

 to render a verdict, the responsibility of which he wishes to be re- 

 lieved of. 



Let us ask ourselves if there really is anything to be gained by the 

 continuance of a system so full of incongruities. People are commenc- 

 ing to ask this question now. One authority says, " Apart from any 

 incidental defects, it may be doubted whether, as an instrument for 

 the investigation of truth, the jury deserves all the encomiums that 

 have been passed upon it." But the same writer goes on to point out 

 that, while the jury might with advantage be dispensed with in civil 

 cases, " opinion in England is unanimously against subjecting a man 

 to serious punishment without the verdict of a jury, and the judges 

 themselves," he adds, " would be the first to deprecate so great a re- 

 sponsibility." But that public sentiment is in favor of the jury system 

 does not prove it to be the best, even in criminal cases. Mere senti- 

 ment is not an argument for the continuance of any system, and moral 

 cowardice is not even an apology for one. Every system, every insti- 

 tution, however useful in the past, whatever may be its claims on the 

 reverence or affection of mankind, must, sooner or later, be brought 

 to the test of present and practical worth. In the Bank of England 

 one is shown a very delicate and ingenious instrument for weighing 

 coins. The coins pass up a tube, at the top of which they pause for a 

 moment and are weighed. If good, they drop into a receiver on the 

 one hand ; if bad, they infallibly go to the other. No human agency 

 is visible, yet each in its turn which does not come up to the standard 

 of this remorseless little instrument is cast aside and rejected. All the 

 institutions of the past are coins for which the age has invented weigh- 

 ing-machines. Each must come up to the standard of actual value, of 

 undoubted utility, or be cast aside. The jury system will be no ex- 

 ception to these. In several countries it is now only used in civil mat- 

 ters. Throughout the Austrian Empire it has been abolished entirely. 

 Law everywhere is undergoing a process of simplification. In English- 

 speaking countries in particular it has, during the last few years, been 

 purged of many abuses, stripped of much that was useless, and, in a 

 few years more, trial by jury will also be swept away. 



