The Jury Fetish. weavers had made good their escape with their booty. Haec fabula docet—well, it teaches several things. For our purpose let us draw the les son, that we may be so blinded by our pre conceptions of a thing, which have been formed and confirmed by authoritative opin ion, that we cannot or will not see that thing in its true light; and only when we become as little children divested of such preconcep tions and looking with the unbeclouded eye of sense—common sense—is the true char acter of the thing disclosed to us. Trial by jury might almost be said to be indigenous to our law. Its origin, certainly, is obscure, and so closely has it ever been associated with the law in common, and even professional thought, that it has seemed to be of its substance rather than as it really is, merely an arm of its administration. It has been a favorite topic for eulogy with our law yer orators, in and out of court. They have delighted to trace its history from the earliest recorded beginnings down through the cen turies: how, in the Magna Charta Libertatum, this priceless privilege was wrested from King John by the barons, sword in hand, at Runnymedc, confirmed by King Henry the Third, redeclared and reasserted in the Peti tion of Right under King Charles the First, and how it has ever stood the great bulwark of our liberties, guaranteeing the protection of life, liberty and property against the ar bitrary interference and spoliation of tyranni cal power. And so, by the fulsome panegy ric of orators and writers this institution has become venerable, something sacred in our juridicial polity, a legal Ark of the Covenant on which it were sacrilege to lay hands. En shrined by tradition and cherished associa tion, there has, thus, been an ascription :o it of a sort of a priori excellence which has fore stalled criticism, blinded us to its glaring de fects and held in abeyance the question which such defects naturally suggest, whether this time-honored mode of trial has not served
its purpose, whether it is not unsuited to the present time and age, and should not be passing, as have gone before, trial by ordeal and by single combat or wager of battle. Trial by jury, in early times, had its highest sanction as a political safeguard, rather than as a particularly just and expeditious method of determining personal or property rights; and the tenacity with which we have clung to this system of trial is doubtless due, in great measure, to the fact that it has been regarded as a repository of popular power to restrain the encroachments of tyrannical au thority. And, indeed, a powerful weapon this was in the hands of the people in the days when autocratic and despotic kings held sway with little regard for the rights of their subjects, and whose minions sat in their tourts to dispense a more than dubious jus tice. But an argument for jury trial, per fectly valid and convincing when based upon such conditions, avails nothing to-day. Our nisi prins judges are, generally, elective. They are from the people and stand close to them, and the citizen, jealous of the right of trial by his peers will be as like to find them on the bench as in the jury box. He will be less likely, too, to imperil his rights by sub mitting them to the determination of the court rather than to a jury, for while scandal is deplorably' rife in connection with our jur ies, it rarely besmirches the judicial ermine. Indeed, the independence, the fearlessness, the probity and the fine sense of honor of our judges are at once the glory and the safe guard of our political system. Laying aside extraneous considerations and viewing trial by jury simply as machin ery for the administration of justice, does not this method fall so far short as to war rant lopping it off as a cumbersome and needless adjunct to our judicial procedure? One of the first essentials in the proper ad ministration of justice, is, surely, that it should be speedy. But it moves at a veritable snail's pace in jury cases. Rarely do these
