against five. Thus, although the trial of
criminal causes still remained with the military, the courts could not
withdraw civil wrongs from the verdict of civilians. By this act the
officers of government were liable to some responsibility, and in
several instances were cast in damages, notwithstanding the efforts of
the crown to defend them.

While civil jurors were confined to civil issues, they sat in the box
occupied at other times by the military jury. An officer had amused his
leisure, while sitting on a trial, by tracing caricatures of the civil
jurors, and writing libels on the benches. Thus insulted, they appealed
to the court for protection. The judge was unwilling to interfere; but
being pressed, remarked, that were the authorship traced to a military
juror, he would close his court rather than intrust to such hands the
administration of justice (1830).

The hostility of the opulent emigrants to the eligibility of emancipists
was intense and lasting. This was still more active when the trial of
criminal issues passed into their hands (1833). They asserted that the
criminal at the bar was too literally tried by his peers, and that
scenes disgraceful to public justice were enacted in the retiring room.
It required all the authority of the court to repress antipathies so
openly avowed. The rancour excited by this question is scarcely
credible: a gentleman addressed the judge from the box before he was
sworn, and asked if he was expected to deliver a verdict with twice
convicted felons? Appearances of partiality and corruption were quoted
to prove the pernicious effect of their admission. The magistrates,
usually hostile to the measure, returned as fit and proper persons,
those whom they knew would disgrace the box. Some flagrant cases were
exhibited as specimens of the whole: a juror, out on bail for
horse-stealing, resolutely acquitted another charged with
cattle-stealing, and was convicted himself. Thus, it was said, returns
to the summons of jurors, in one instance, was "hanged;" in another,
"transported for life."

These were certainly blemishes, but they were magnified into radical and
incurable defects (1835). The complaints of the gentry, induced Governor
Bourke to take the opinion of the judges and the law officers of the
crown: on the whole, they were fully satisfied with the result of the
law. It was remarked by a judge, that the accused would sometimes choose
a military jury, or a jury of twelve, a