310 DUBOIS— OBSERVATIONS ON THE [April 23. 



men. One never expects to serve if release is possible, another 

 chafes under his weary durance yet says that he ought and means 

 to serve if possible. 



Once in the traces and more or less accustomed to the routine 

 the first pressure of the screws is less felt. But, none the less, the 

 juror has a mind and a body. He does not forget that he was born 

 a freeman nor that he is absent from farm or store or office. The 

 delays, the wearisome reiterations and professional fencing, the in- 

 terruptions and general unbusinesslike pace of procedure are at his 

 cost. They irritate and disgust. 



When the juror is drawn from the " panel " to serve on a particu- 

 lar case he is ordered into his seat with pretty much the same show 

 of authority and sense of subjection as he sees when the accused 

 defendant is policed into his presence. In an interesting reminiscence 

 of long and varied jury experience published in a magazine article 

 some years ago Mr. Joseph Hornor Coates speaks deprecatingly of 

 these indignities : 



" The juryman from his first entrance in response to the court's peremp- 

 tory summons finds little in his treatment to impress him with an idea of 

 special dignity in his position, even if he has no overt cause of compliant. 

 He is herded with his fellows, ordered about by the tipstaves or bailiffs of 

 court, addressed in peremptory tones .... He sits in the court room with 

 an ever-present sense if he be sensitive, that he must be careful not to get 

 into trouble; the feeling of liberty is gone, he is enveloped in an atmosphere 

 of restraint. Really, he is placed more on an equality with the prisoner at the 

 bar than with the judge on the bench, yet he is as essentially a part of the 

 court as that august potentate and may have at any time a greater responsi- 

 bility imposed upon him. In some court rooms when disengaged from the 

 actual trial of any case and awaiting summons to the jury-box, the juror is 

 often forced to sit among criminals, witnesses, loafers and ill-smelling per- 

 sons attracted to the court by business or curiosity." 



While the average juror resents these low estimates of his office 

 he does not, perhaps, fully realize how his own judicial faculty is 

 lowered by his lowered estimate of the court as an institution. He 

 becomes critical and dislikes being party to the system. 



The juror's disposition to criticize the system (rather than 

 court officers themselves, for the officers naturally fall into the formal 

 bondage of a system) increases through the meanderings of the trial, 

 — the surplussage, the objecting attorney, the lust for filing ex- 



