l causes. I do not know whether the jury is useful to those who are
in litigation; but I am certain it is highly beneficial to those who
decide the litigation; and I look upon it as one of the most efficacious
means for the education of the people which society can employ.

What I have hitherto said applies to all nations, but the remark I
am now about to make is peculiar to the Americans and to democratic
peoples. I have already observed that in democracies the members of the
legal profession and the magistrates constitute the only aristocratic
body which can check the irregularities of the people. This aristocracy
is invested with no physical power, but it exercises its conservative
influence upon the minds of men, and the most abundant source of its
authority is the institution of the civil jury. In criminal causes, when
society is armed against a single individual, the jury is apt to
look upon the judge as the passive instrument of social power, and to
mistrust his advice. Moreover, criminal causes are entirely founded upon
the evidence of facts which common sense can readily appreciate; upon
this ground the judge and the jury are equal. Such, however, is not the
case in civil causes; then the judge appears as a disinterested arbiter
between the conflicting passions of the parties. The jurors look up to
him with confidence and listen to him with respect, for in this instance
their intelligence is completely under the control of his learning. It
is the judge who sums up the various arguments with which their memory
has been wearied out, and who guides them through the devious course of
the proceedings; he points their attention to the exact question of
fact which they are called upon to solve, and he puts the answer to the
question of law into their mouths. His influence upon their verdict is
almost unlimited.

If I am called upon to explain why I am but little moved by the
arguments derived from the ignorance of jurors in civil causes, I reply,
that in these proceedings, whenever the question to be solved is not
a mere question of fact, the jury has only the semblance of a judicial
body. The jury sanctions the decision of the judge, they by the
authority of society which they represent, and he by that of reason and
of law. *h

[Footnote h: See Appendix, R.]

In England and in America the judges exercise an influence upon criminal
trials which the French judges have never possessed. The reason of
this difference