Price.l 220 f^*y- 



should quickly find tbe prisoner guilty of a capital offence, while the 

 minority held a different opinion, or had doubts of his guilt ? Is it 

 not better that several guilty persons should escape, than that one 

 innocent should be sacrificed ? And what duty is there that is not 

 better performed by some physical sacrifice, and more willingly en- 

 dured, that the duty is a most responsible one ? There are few 

 moral, religious, or legal duties performed under sacrifice of comfort 

 and through abstinence, that are not performed with clearer intellects 

 and a more exalted sense of duty. And when jurors are charged 

 with the life of a fellow-being, Avhat is the suffering of confinement 

 or abstinence compared with their faithful discharge of duty towards 

 him and the Commonwealth, on the one hand, to protect society 

 from the return to it of the guilty, again to commit wrongs upon itj 

 on the other, to save innocence from an ignominious and suffering 

 death? Conscientious men, in case of difficulty, would rather wish 

 to test their fidelity to their consciences and their country, by an 

 ordeal of suffering, than to act with a doubtful precipitancy. How 

 earnestly and fliith fully jurors act, and how much they will sacrifice 

 to the Divine sense of duty implanted in the human breast, we often 

 see exemplified, and in the case from which has just been cited the 

 expression of Chief Justice Tilghman, one of our former wealthiest 

 and most public-spirited fellow-citizens, Henry Pratt, the foreman of 

 the jury, who possessed everything that could contribute to the happi- 

 ness of life, declared to the court that he " would perish before he 

 agreed to a verdict that was against his judgment." (6 S. & R. 

 578.) 



The late Judge James Wilson, in his course of lectures on law, 

 with a benevolent sympathy for jurors placed under a strong obliga- 

 tion of attaining a unanimous result, has endeavored to state those 

 principles of action which should or may govern them, and facilitate 

 their conclusion. He says, " To the conviction of a crime, the un- 

 doubting and unanimous sentiment of the twelve jurors is of indis- 

 pensable necessity. In civil causes, the sentiment of a majority of 

 the jurors forms the verdict of the jury, in the same manner as the 

 sentiment of a majority of the judges forms the judgment of the 

 court." He means by this, that when the genuine sentiment of a 

 majority of the twelve is ascertained, the minority should acquiesce, 

 and take the opinion of the majority as the verdict of the whole, as 

 the opinion of a majority of the judges is the decision of the court. 

 But the cases are not parallel. The dissentient judges express their 

 dissent, and are in nowise responsible for the judgment. But the 



