1828.] Affairs in General. 627 
occurs within our own experience, and cannot be contested, and cannot 
be exceeded in absurdity. If all the tales and manceuvres of juries were 
told, that might be told, we must laugh the institution to scorn. It is, 
indeed, fitted for nothing but facts, on the face of “it, and not always we 
see for that. It is just possible, and no more, that twelve men shall be 
uniformly impressed by the same evidence—in cases, that is, where the 
evidence is as striking as if the fact were committed in the court, and 
before the eyes of the jury ; but, suppose a man from perversity, from 
prejudice, from favour, or any other unequitable feeling, determined to 
carry the verdict his way, the chances are a thousand to one against his 
encountering another as pertinacious as himself, and then he gains his 
point. We have heard, more than once, of persons fortifying themselves 
with a good store of sandwiches, to enable them to persevere, and starve 
down more improvident opposition; and the fact is notorious, that 
wrong-headed people, with prejudices against particular offences, go 
into jury boxes with a determination to convict. To oppose, then, the 
obvious modification which the existing system calls for, is sheer pig- 
headedness—nothing more is required than a majority instead of unani- - 
mity—two-thirds, or three-fourths, with a limitation as to time ; for, if 
the jury, after hearing evidence, and the law, are not in a state to return 
their verdict within half an hour, they will not be at all. The longer 
they deliberate, the more likely they are to get into jangling, into angry 
feelings—to lose sight of facts, and indulge in conjecture, and interpreta- 
tion, and subtlety—and then they blunder. Under such an arrangement, 
tossing, and drawing will, at all events, be superfluous ; and no man, 
again, will have it in his power to force another into a change of opinion 
by dint of working on the imbecility or the cravings of his stomach. 
‘We should not hesitate to say, indeed, that if the opinion a man forms 
at the conclusion of the trial, be changed after withdrawing, it will be 
changed upon wrong grounds, and then, so far as he is concerned, injus- 
tice is done ; and we are, for our parts, thoroughly satisfied there could 
be no better way, than taking the aye, or no, of each juryman, on the 
spot, and determining the verdict by a majority of two-thirds. 
~ But we have a word or two with the practice of the courts, for de- 
manding a peremptory verdict—guilty, or not guilty—which involves, 
at once, law, fact, and inference, and carries absurdity, often, on the face 
of it. A man commits an act—the evidence that he commits it is good, 
but the design with which he commits it may not be clear—nor, again, 
that he commits it in the teeth of any law; yet the jury are required to 
pronounce, by one word, upon the whole. The judge says he cannot 
admit special verdicts. We refer to a recent case to illustrate our mean- 
ing—Hunton’s. He is charged with an act of forgery—with performing 
an illegal act, and, moreover, with doing it with a fraudulent intent. 
The act of forgery was manifest—that is, he had made use of other per- 
sons names, or fictitious ones—and presented bills with these names, 
purporting to be real ones, to his bankers to be discounted—intending, 
apparently, to take them up when they became due. But the mere act 
of employing fictitious names is not enough to complete the act of for- 
gery, in the legal sense—the fraudulent intention must be fairly and dis- 
tinctly inferrible. In the case to which we are alluding, such intention 
was absolutely negatived, for the prosecutors were actually in possession 
of a counter security ; and it would have been their own faults if they 
had ventured to. discount beyond the value of the security, and they 
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