ustoms are only provisional means. Foolish judges accuse such juries
of "Perjury;" but it is clear enough, Gentlemen, where the falseness
is.

"Do you take notice of that juryman dressed in blue?" said one of the
judges at the old Bailey to Judge Nares. "Yes." "Well, then, take my
word for it, there will not be a single conviction to-day for any
capital offence." So it turned out. The "gentleman in blue" thought it
unjust and wicked, contrary to the ultimate Purpose of law, to hang
men, and he was faithful to his juror's oath in refusing to convict.
Of course he did not doubt of the Fact, or the Law, only of the
Justice of its Application. One day there will be a good many
"gentlemen in blue."

To prevent this moral independence of the jury from defeating the
immoral aim of the government, or of the judges, or the
legislature--the court questions the jurors beforehand, and drives off
from the panel all who think the statute unfit for such application.
Gentlemen, that is a piece of wicked tyranny. It would be as unfair to
exclude such men from the legislature, or from the polls, as from the
jury box. In such cases the defendant is not tried by his "country,"
but by a jury packed for the purpose of convicting him, spite of the
moral feelings of the people.

Sometimes the statute is so framed that the jurors must by their
verdict tell an apparent falsehood, or commit a great injustice. When
it was a capital offence in England to steal forty shillings, and
evidence made it plain that the accused had actually stolen eight or
ten times that value, you all know how often the jurors brought in a
verdict of "_stealing thirty-nine shillings_."[166] They preferred to
tell what seemed to be a lie, rather than kill a man for stealing
fifteen or twenty dollars. The verdict of NOT GUILTY would have been
perfectly just in form as in substance, and conformable to their
official oath.

[Footnote 166: See several cases of this kind in Sullivan on Abolition
of Punishment of Death, (N.Y. 1841), 73. Rantoul's Works, 459.]

Gentlemen, tyrannical rulers, and their servants, despotic and corrupt
judges, have sought to frighten the juries from the exercise of all
discretion--either moral or intellectual. To that end they threaten
them before the verdict, and punish them when they decide contrary to
the wish of the tyrant. To make the jurors agree in a unanimous
verdict, they were kept without "fire or water or food or bed" until
they came