and which no longer disgraces our rules of procedure! The right of either party to select a special jury seems to us to be quite intelligible. The horror of a "jury of farmers" which seems to be a kind of nightmare to Ameri can practitioners, is unknown to English lawyers. We know how to sympathize with you in your efforts to convince twelve good men and true, who know nothing beyond the necessity of a rotation of crops and the latest improvements in agricultural implements, of the utility and newness of some complicated mechanical patent. There is nothing irra tional in requiring men above the average intelligence to pass upon a subject which the average intelligence cannot grapple. I assume challenges are never used, except where there is some necessity for them. In England, happily, most people have implicit confidence in the fairness of the men who swear a "true deliverance to make," and experience has scarcely disappointed this opinion; but we have a shrewd suspicion that you mean more by a " good jury" than you would like to confess. In Ireland, owing to the unfortunate political condition of the country, it is not uncommon to see the Crown go through the entire panel in exercising its right of ordering jurors to " stand aside;" and there both parties frequently exhaust their right of challenge. I should have thought that the last thing to be found fault with by any person, much less by a lawyer, is the "absence of emphatic objections" in a court of justice. If I under stand the learned contributor to your May number to mean by " emphatic " objections objections which are pressed upon a judge, notwithstanding his previous ruling, it seems to me such a course necessarily implies that the judge is weak-minded or does not know his own mind, or that his knowledge of the law is at fault. Nothing, it is true, would be considered to be in worse taste in our courts than to try and make a judge swallow his own words. No one ever attempts it, for the men who practise before the judges of
the High Court are well aware that a long course of legal training with long years of experience have made them thoroughly capa ble of grasping every statement of fact and law as soon as it is intelligently stated, and we take it for granted that his conscience never yields to any external consideration. Such being the case, if the judge is of opin ion that an objection is untenable when first put, how will more emphasis generally guide his judgment to a different conclusion? And it is not any " affectation of deference" towards the judge, or any feeling of his "omnipotence" that determines the respectful conduct of bar risters towards the bench. The deference is real, because it is generally merited, and be cause at least some deference is necessary. The probity of the English judges, their untir ing patience, their courtesy to the members of the bar, their encouragement to its junior element, have gained such an honorable name for them, and have ensured such respect for them, as may well be the model, if not the envy of every bar and judiciary in the world. I fancied any comparison made between the appearances of the English and Ameri can courts of justice should result in favor of the former. When I read Mr. Oakey Hall's description of the courts at Westmin ster, I involuntarily repeated the lines of the Scotch poet : — "Oh, would some power the giftie gie us To see ourselves as others see us."
The only objection I had previously heard made to the court-rooms was, that the judge could not hear the barristers, and that the barristers could not see the judges; but this is merely an accident, or, perhaps, "an acci dent of an accident." In America it is not uncommon to find the benches assigned to the bar occupied by people who have no other business in court than that which idle curios ity dictates. And if you are sensitive to the stale flavor of the " weed," and the frequent use of spittoons, with the thermometer stand ing at 80°, Madame Roland's famous words may spring to your lips : "Justice, what crimes are wrought in thy name! "
