ry,
violating a rule, claiming any personal rights or protesting against
caste, age, or privilege.

Always there are certain men who believe that all reform in criminal
procedure must come by abolishing juries and submitting every question
to a court. Those who are rich and strong and the lawyers who advocate
their interests are mainly arrayed on this side. The poor and
rebellious, with those who naturally or otherwise advocate their cause,
stand for the juries as against the courts. Those who strive to be fair
are often misled from a lack of experience and little judgment of human
nature. The public is always against the accused. The press is against
him. The machinery of the law is against him. The dice are loaded for
his conviction. Some people have childish faith in the courts. But
judges are neither infinitely wise nor infinitely good; they come from
the ranks of lawyers and for the most part from those who have been long
engaged in defending property rights; they are generally conservative;
they are not independent of public opinion; almost invariably they
reflect public opinion, which means the public opinion of the community
in which they live. Few of them have much knowledge of biology, of
psychology, of sociology, or even of history.

One curse of our political life comes from the fact that as soon as a
man has secured an office, he has his eye on another and his whole
effort is to please the people, that is, the people who express
themselves the most easily. Very few judges rise to a great degree of
independence or defy popular clamor. A jury is less bound by public
opinion; their responsibility is divided; they are not as a rule seeking
office; while swayed by the crowd they are still more independent than
judges and with them the common man, the accused, has a better chance.

No doubt judges are abler, better educated, more accustomed to weighing
evidence and able to arrive at a more logical conclusion than most
juries. Still none of these qualities necessarily leads to just
findings. Questions of right and wrong are not determined by strict
rules of logic. If public opinion could come to regard the criminal as
it does the insane, the imbecile, or the ill, then a judicial
determination would be the best. But as long as crime is regarded as
moral delinquency and punishment savors of vengeance, every possible
safeguard and protection must be thrown around the accused. In the
settling of opinions and the pa