Price.] 214 t^^^y- 



deciding upon tlie rights, reputations, fortunes, and lives of their 

 fellow-citizens, are dismissed, and become invisible in the commu- 

 nity. Thus the whole qualified male citizens in turn perform this 

 high function, and the whole in turn share this fearful responsibility, 

 and divide the resentment that follows disappointed litigation. It 

 then results, as stated by the profound and philosophical Montesquieu, 

 "By this means the power of judging, a power so terrible to man- 

 kind, not being annexed to any particular state or profession, becomes, 

 as it were, invisible. The people have not then the judges continu- 

 ally present to their view ; they fear the office, but not the magistrate." 

 (Bk. XI, Ch. VI.) This is all the more important where we have in 

 operation a system not only to elect the judiciary after a term of 

 years, but have also constituted some of our Courts judges of elec- 

 tions, and their decisions necessarily become the subject of partisan 

 censure and hostility. To such feeling have some of the best judges 

 been sacrificed, or put in peril of failure in their re-election. 



And are not jurors an important assistance in the administration 

 of justice? The best Judges bear testimony that they are. If jus- 

 tice be done to the wheel by placing in it the most intelligent citi- 

 zens of all occupations, every traverse jury of twelve men should 

 possess an aggregate of practical information, that should be greater 

 than that of the Judge on the bench, however good his legal infor- 

 mation, and as a rule, Judges admit this to be their experience as to 

 jury trials. Yet in our city, though the Legislature has sought to 

 remedy the evil, and to place that remedy in the hands of the Judges, 

 there is a failure to get into our jury-boxes the full average of the 

 intelligence of the community. There is an unpatriotic evasion of 

 this most important duty by many citizens, who are willing enough 

 to complain of the delinquency of others, when it becomes their own 

 misfortune to be litigating parties. 



Another suggested reform it is that jurors should be authorized to 

 decide by some number less than the whole. The wisdom of co- 

 ercing a unanimity of decision is spoken of as a relic of the barba- 

 rous age in which the trial by jury had its origin. It is said that 

 it is to bring about a verdict, which should be the result of an en- 

 lightened intelligence only, by the powers of the -respective jurors to 

 undergo physical endurance. This requirement of a unanimous 

 verdict, it is believed, must have proceeded from that jealousy of 

 liberty and desire of security, which influenced the minds of the 

 people who instituted the trial by jury. They thought it best that 

 the accused should not be convicted, unless the case was so clearly 



