justice, to constitute himself, of his own free will, an avenger of
the public conscience.... If, in a State afflicted with political
sickness, the institution of the jury had fallen so deep as to work
with the mechanical certainty of a military court, and to heed
nothing but the points of view of jurisprudence, without being
touched by the current of moral aspirations, thus merely
registering, with Byzantine obedience, the paragraphs of a code of
law: such a phenomenon--keeping, as it would, the Government in a
dangerous error as regards public life--would be far more
reprehensible than that verdict of 'not guilty' by which a whole
system of Government was practically condemned."

The Russian Government system Herr von Holtzendorff, who personally
belongs to a very moderate political party, brands as "a system of
arbitrary police ordinances, and of the virtual sovereignty of the
Adjutants-General of the Czar--a system of administrative deportations,
of despotic arrestations, of press-gagging--a swashbuckler's
government." Another German writer of some distinction, Dr. Henry
Jaques, observes--

"Where an absolutist monarch rules in arbitrary manner, without any
limits to his power, the jury becomes the only representative organ
of a people utterly bereft of all political rights. In such a case,
a jury is indeed entitled to speak, before all, the language of the
people, the language of its aspirations towards freedom, which must
be heard before everything else, if the nation is to acquire its
true rights. Even as, in the Iliad, the orphaned Andromache says to
the parting Hector: 'Thou art now father, brother, and dear mother
to me!' so the Russian people may say to its jury: 'You are now
legislators, judges, and the source of mercy at one and the same
time to me! In you there reposes the One and All of my political
hopes, of my political rights!"

Noble words, but vain hope! First of all, it is not correct to say that
Vjera Sassulitch had been judged by a jury under a political charge. For
political crimes, or accusations, no jury has ever existed under
Alexander II. Vjera Sassulitch was charged with what Government chose to
consider a _common_ crime; hence only she was brought before a jury. For
political offenders, or what Government chooses to regard as political
offenders, packed tribunals have alway