ment seat, affecting by an antiquated foppery of
dress to impress the audience with awe; then causing witnesses and Jury
to be sworn to truth and justice, himself having officially sworn the
same; then causing to be read a prosecution against a man charging him
with having _wickedly and maliciously written and published a certain
false, wicked, and seditious book_; and having gone through all this
with a shew of solemnity, as if he saw the eye of the Almighty darting
through the roof of the building like a ray of light, turn, in an
instant, the whole into a farce, and, in order to obtain a verdict
that could not otherwise be obtained, tell the Jury that the charge of
_falsely, wickedly, and seditiously_, meant nothing; that _truth_ was
out of the question; and that whether the person accused spoke truth or
falsehood, or intended _virtuously or wickedly_, was the same thing;
and finally conclude the wretched inquisitorial scene, by stating
some antiquated precedent, equally as abominable as that which is then
acting, or giving some opinion of his own, and _falsely calling the one
and the other--Law_. It was, most probably, to such a Judge as this,
that the most solemn of all reproofs was given--"_The Lord will smite
thee, thou whitened wall_."

I now proceed to offer some remarks on what is called a Special Jury. As
to what is called a Special Verdict, I shall make no other remark upon
it, than that it is in reality _not_ a verdict. It is an attempt on the
part of the Jury to delegate, or of the Bench to obtain, the exercise of
that right, which is committed to the Jury only.

With respect to the Special Juries, I shall state such matters as I have
been able to collect, for I do not find any uniform opinion concerning
the mode of appointing them.

In the first place, this mode of trial is but of modern invention, and
the origin of it, as I am told, is as follows:

Formerly, when disputes arose between Merchants, and were brought before
a Court, the case was that the nature of their commerce, and the method
of keeping Merchants' accounts not being sufficiently understood by
persons out of their own line, it became necessary to depart from the
common mode of appointing Juries, and to select such persons for a Jury
whose _practical knowledge_ would enable them to decide upon the case.
From this introduction, Special Juries became more general; but some
doubts having arisen as to their legality, an act was passed in the 3