Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1854-06-27

A NOBLE GRAND jury We understand,
unoficially, that a Grand Jury has refused to
find bills against Rev. Theodore Parker, Wen
dell Phillips, DIR. S. q. Howe and others, for
sedition, or for aiding in the slave riot. The
Jury could not be urged or coaxed into it. A
government officer has often, in other places,
advocated the doctrine that Juries are judges
Of the law as well as of the facts. And i'll the
cases which have lately been brought to the
notice Of Grand Jury, they have followed
this doctrine, although the same advocate ar
gued The reverse to them. 1t IS said there
was some curious swearing before the Jury
referred to. 1t was of such character tn at
it was not generally believed by the jurors
hence no bills Sunday Ne,os, June 20.
We understand that Hallett has made very
great exertion to get indictments against these
men; but we did not believe he could succeed
in this nefarious business, and we felt quite
sure that no jury could be made to convict
them, even if they should be indicted. We
have been confident that the Grand Jury
would save the State from this additional out
rage, by protecting its character from the dis
grace of such indictments. Nothing but the
bloodhound spirit Of the slave power, at work
in the basest and most INSCRIPTIONS of its
vassals, could have instigated such proceedings
against those men, for anything they did or
said that night, in Faneuil Hall. 1t is a very
high handed proceeding, even for political
scoundrelism that has become ashamed Of
itself, to perpetrate great outrage, that makes
all the purest and best men and women shud-
der and burn with indignation,, and then
undertake to indict them for being thus ex-
cited.
In such cases, it is the imperative duty of
the Grand Jury to remember that they are not
bound to accept the law as it may be laid down
by the District Attorney, or even by the
judge. And they should also Just as care
fully remember, that in regard to political Of
lenses, or cases where men are charged with
crime merely to crafty depotic govern ment
or malignant and INSCRIPTIONS faction that
controls the government, or a blood thirsty
prosecuting officer, that the grand jury, as
well as the petit jury, stands to guard the
liberty and personal rights of the citizen, that
they are bound to judge of both the law
and the facls, and that if even they accept
the law as laid down by the Court, they are
not bound to " find true BILL if, in the
honest exercise of their discretion, they think
the prosecution ought to be stopped. This is
prerogative which the grand juries in Bos-
ton have always exercised, and we trust they
will always continue to exercise it.
That community in which the minions of
despotism can crush out opposition to wicked
laws, and force everybody to bless the internal
rascalities employed to execute them, must be
utterly unfit for democratic Institutions
There can be no genuine reverence for law,
no honest and reliable sense of the great du-
ties of citizenship, in those who can uphold
wickedness, and cheer on its blood thirsty
ministers. We owe duty to the laws---but
we owe still higher duty to that eternal JUS
tice which gives just laws their sanction, and
which has nothing but anathemas for such
infamous enactments as the fugitive slave bill.
That bill teens with denominations. It is I'M
constitutional, inhuman, Internal. 1t is a
hideous monster, that not only tramples
under foot the Constitution and breaks down
the safeguards of personal freedom, but wages
deadly war against everything that gives
worth and beauty to human nature. 1t must
and will be spurned, hated, and treated as a
savage enemy, as long as that nobleness of
manhood, which is the only secure basis for
law and order, continues to exist among u.s.
Commonwealth.