1863.J 213 [Price. 



mitted that it is very important that the parties litigant should have 

 confidence in their Judges, and be willing to hold or lose their sup- 

 posed rights by their arbitrament, and also that exact justice, as 

 nearly as practicable, should be administered, there are public objects 

 to be attained by this method of trial by jury, of a political bearing, 

 of even greater importance than the interests of the parties litigant. 



Trial by jury is necessarily a public proceeding, and that publicity 

 is the strongest guarantee against judicial favoritism and corruption. 

 The bystanders witness the whole proceeding, and not only they, 

 but through the press, the whole public are the observant critics of 

 every important trial. Thus are the Judges and jury the "observed 

 of all observers," and are undergoing a trial, as well as the accused, 

 or the parties litigant. And thus too, not only the jurors in attend- 

 ance, but the whole public, are constantly deriving an education in 

 public affairs, and are learning the principles of law by which they 

 hold their property, and enjoy all their rights. This to the mass of 

 the business community is probably the most important of all the 

 education they receive. It is important to themselves in their busi- 

 ness affairs ; it is more important in their capacity of constituents in 

 a representative government, and in their capacity of possessors of 

 the ultimate sovereignty of their country. It is their needed training 

 as a free people, to enable them to appreciate and maintain a free 

 government ; and to perpetuate it, as they have inherited it, to future 

 times. Supersede this system by cheaper modes, and more secret 

 proceedings, then all this participation of the people in the adminis- 

 tration of justice, so fraught with useful instruction to them, and we 

 shall be on the road to national declension, and soon lose those cha- 

 racteristics which make us a nation of freemen. 



Again, Judges who are not the appointees of a power, absolute by 

 the standing armies it controls, could not sustain themselves in the 

 public confidence, if under a compulsion to decide both facts and 

 law, and especially if their proceedings were in written depositions 

 and pleadings, and but little discussed before the public. Too many 

 parties would be disappointed litigants, conceiving themselves in- 

 jured, not to make a large aggregate of hostile feeling against Judges, 

 who must decide many hundred causes in each year, and in each 

 cause making one party unfriendly if not hostile. With the assist- 

 ance of juries, the Judges escape this injustice which proceeds from 

 disappointed expectations. The jurors are suddenly called from the 

 mass of the citizens, for a few weeks exercise this terrible power of 



VOL. IX. — 2c 



