In this interesting fragment, quoted by Bogul in his “History of an Extinct Civilization,” we learn something of the shame and peril of American citizenship under institutions which, not having run their foreordained course to the unhappy end, were still in some degree supportable.  What these institutions became afterward is a familiar story.  It is true that the law of trial by jury was repealed.  It had broken down, but not until it had sapped the whole nation’s respect for all law, for all forms of authority, for order and private virtues.  The people whose rude forefathers in another land it had served roughly to protect against their tyrants, it had lamentably failed to protect against themselves, and when in madness they swept it away, it was not as one renouncing an error, but as one impatient of the truth which the error is still believed to contain.  They flung it away, not as an ineffectual restraint, but as a restraint; not because it was no longer an instrument of justice for the determination of truth, but because they feared that it might again become such.  In brief, trial by jury was abolished only when it had provoked anarchy.

Before turning to another phase of this ancient civilization I cannot forbear to relate, after the learned and ingenious Gunkux, the only known instance of a public irony expressing itself in the sculptor’s noble art.  In the ancient city of Hohokus once stood a monument of colossal size and impressive dignity.  It was erected by public subscription to the memory of a man whose only distinction consisted in a single term of service as a juror in a famous murder trial, the details of which have not come down to us.  This occupied the court and held public attention for many weeks, being bitterly contested by both prosecution and defense.  When at last it was given to the jury by the judge in the most celebrated charge that had ever been delivered from the bench, a ballot was taken at once.  The jury stood eleven for acquittal to one for conviction.  And so it stood at every ballot of the more than fifty that were taken during the fortnight that the jury was locked up for deliberation.  Moreover, the dissenting juror would not argue the matter; he would listen with patient attention while his eleven indignant opponents thundered their opinions into his ears, even when they supported them with threats of personal violence; but not a word would he say.  At last a disagreement was formally entered, the jury discharged and the obstinate juror chased from the city by the maddened populace.  Despairing of success in another trial and privately admitting his belief in the prisoner’s innocence, the public prosecutor moved for his release, which the judge ordered with remarks plainly implying his own belief that the wrong man had been tried.

Years afterward the accused person died confessing his guilt, and a little later one of the jurors who had been sworn to try the case admitted that he had attended the trial on the first day only, having been personated during the rest of the proceedings by a twin brother, the obstinate member, who was a deaf-mute.