The Birmingham age-herald., 1913-07-20

ONDON, July 19.-(Specia1.)- )-Trial
by jury in England is in the melt
ing pot and no one can tell how
that institution patriotic British orators
have been in the habit of alluding to as
1.-The palladium of our British liberty
will emerge. There are a lot of people,
and among them an uncommonly large
number of judges, lawyers and other ex-
perts who would like to see it suppressed
altogether, but 1t is hardly likely that the
man in the street who has a deep-rooted
distrust of the expert will consent. At
the same time he is deeply dissatisfied
with the system which compels him to
give up days and sometimes weeks of
his time to listening to other people S
troubles. so it is not unlikely he will agree
the system.
The first step in changing any old es-
tablished law or custom in England is to
appoint a royal commission to take tes-
timony and report on it. That was done
in the case of the jury system in Decem-
Der, 1911, and the commission has just
published its report 1t is worthy of note
that this is almost a record in speed for
royal commission. Perhaps this bus-
ness like promptness Is due to the fact
that this particular commission was pre-
sided over by Lord Mersey, who also had
charge of the Titanic investigation. Lord
Mersey before his retirement and eleva-
tion to the peerage was a great judge,
and was noted for the expedition with
which he conducted in his courts in his
courts, and no man Is better fitted to hold
an inquest on the jury system; for he has
sat as a criminal judge, where juries are
the invariable rule, as Judge of the
kings bench, where cases are sometimes
tried by jury and sometimes without; as a
chancery judge, where juries are usually
dispensed with, and as president of the
probate divorce and admiralty division,
whore sometimes he was assisted by
a jury and sometimes not.
What he thinks of juries in criminal
cases may be judged from a remark
which he Is said to have made at a
gathering of lawyers. 1t was:
IF / were placed on trial for a Grim
fnal offence and had my choice, 1 would
choose trial by jury If l were guilty
for then might get off, but IL / were
innocent l should strongly prefer to
entrust my life and liberty to a Judge
More vigorous but much to the same
effect was the address made by a
famous Scottish Judge to a jury who
had Just brought in a verdict of mot
guilty In murder trial.
Gentlemen of the jury said the
Judge, IF ever it should be my mis-
fortune to commit murder and be
placed on trial for my life / pray God
that | shall be tried before IL such
asses as yourselves
AS In all solem inquests on old es-
tapiished institutions in this country
the nrst step of the Royal commission
on the jury system was to try and dis
cover the origin of the system, but In
this case the effort wasn't particularly
successful Like Topsy the system
doesn't seem to have been born. II
Just growed" and something like II
seems to have ben in existence in these
Islands before the dawn of history
Popular legends credit its invention to
Alfred the Great, but the commission
found that there were traces of it be-
fore the time of the Romans Black
stone calls 1t "a trial that hath been
used time out of mind in this nation
and seems to have been coeval with the
first civil government thereof"
1t Is clear. however, that when the
Normans came they found jury sys-
tenn in full swing and they adopted II
and developed 1t. At first however.
it was rather an assemblage of Wit
nesses-of mans neighbors who
knew all the facts in the case and were
called to assist the kings Judge In
doing justice. Especially in civil cases
the jurors were men of local know