Los Angeles herald., 1891-03-20
FRIDAY, MARCH go. 1891.
THE RESPECTABLE CLASSES NOT
BLAMELESS.

There is phase OF the New Orleans
affair which has been but little touched
upon, but which has it's counterpart in
every city in the union. There, as here
and everywhere, it is almost impossible
to get the best and most RESPONSIBLE ele-
ment to perform jury duty. 1t is the
standing complaint of sheriffs, and other
officers who are in position to know from
experience, that persons summoned as
jurors either beg off at first or stretch
their consciences in the court by swear
ing to excuses that are really not true.
Judges declare that, on account OF the
difficulty to secure juries from the best
element, they have to put up with men
who are neither fitted morally or intel
lectually to try cases. These men are
always conveniently on hand when a
jury is to be summoned, and it has come
to be a matter of public notoriety that
in every city there is class of profess
sional Jurors who all bear the same gen.
eral features, and who are type of the
men who make laws farce.
If respectable citizens will abdicate
their public duties, dangerous class
will make it to their interest to fill them.
This remark applies as we'll to politics
as to juries. The better element of
society refuse to perform their duties as
citizens by taking the initiative III
politics, and in doing so they leave the
door open to a class of unprincipled
people who make politics business.
The decent citizens themselves thus rem
der it possible for bossism to thrive and
professional jurors to bring the law into
contempt.
Had the decent element of San Fran
cisco attended to their public duties in
the early fifties, the uprising in 1856and
the formation of vigilance committee,
would have been avoided. Then, as
now, business men left jury duty to the
scum. Then, as now, the respectable
classes left the hoodlum element to con-
troll primaries and stuff conventions.
New Orleans has been notorious for
years as a place where Justice miscarries
in every case that is of serious nature
and in which persons with friends and
means are tried for crime. What other
result can we look for when the people
who should stand between crime and
the community absolutely and success
fully evade their responsibility? Their
laches making it possible that jury
fixers. false witnesses and all the ver-
min that tester upon outraged justice
should exist and flourish.
1t is about time that the better ele-
ment should take new departure in
regard to the public duties that devolve
upon them. They cannot expect to
leave to the scum of society the per-
formance of their own duties and not
find in the end that they have raised up
q Frankenstein which will not down
without shaking the foundations of
society.
The jury system is the best that can
be devised ii the best people in the
community will become jurors. But if
they will not, and it is left to the hood
lum and unscrupulous element, then it,
is the very worst system we could have
to administer justice or to decide upon
property rights between man and man.
If it is utterly impossible to provide
means by which juries shall be purified
and the better element made to serve,
then the sooner we get rid of the system
the better. 1t worked well in the re-
mote ages and in despotic countries.
It was then bulwark of security against
the unscrupulous great and the tyranni-
cal powerful. At time when Richie
lieu had to remind a graceless king that
for justice all seasons was time and all
places temples, jury was really what
Burke and Erskine termed it, palla.
dunn OF liberty and bulwark of Justice.