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The ostensible purpose of these provisions was doubtless to ensure that the selected jurors should be bound by no tie of kindred to the individuals who would appear before their judgment seat; but they must have had the effect of excluding from the new panel many of the true knights belonging to the eighteen centuries; for this select corps was largely composed of members of the noble families.
It was a great hardship in all these trials, that the prisoners were not allowed any counsel; while on the other hand, the members of the Court seemed to take it for granted from the first, that they were guilty. The only favor allowed them was the right of objecting to a certain extent to those jurors whose fairness they mistrusted.
The jury that had listened with ill-concealed envy to the recital of the amorous interne's promiscuous exploits, listened to Hazlitt and experienced suddenly a fine rage against the deceased. Out of the young attorney's florid utterings a question fired itself into the minds of the jurors. The deceased had done what they all desired to do, but dared not.
Baron and churchman and burgher alike saw every question turn to a demand of money to swell the royal Hoard; jurors were fined for any trifling flaw in legal procedure; widows were fined for leave to marry, guardians for leave to receive their wards; if a peasant were kicked by his horse, if in fishing he fell from the side of his boat, or if in carrying home his eels or herrings he stumbled and was crushed by the cart-wheel, his wretched children saw horse or boat or cart with its load of fish which in older days had been forfeited as "deodand" to the service of God, now carried off to the king's Hoard; if a miller was caught in the wheel of his mill the sheriff must see the price of it paid to the royal treasury.
He wondered whether Morgan had not come and entered into a conspiracy with her to shield themselves. In such case what would his unfolding of the whole truth amount to, discredited as he already was in the minds of the jurors by that foolish threat which he had uttered against Isom in the thin dawn of that distant day?
His disqualification as an elector shuts him out of the jury box in courts where what few rights he has left are adjudicated and his grievances redressed. His disqualification as an elector and as a juror discredits him as a witness. In the states which have adopted these disfranchising constitutions, more than three hundred thousand citizens have been thereby disqualified as jurors.
In their report at the October term of the Warren Circuit Court, the Grand jurors say: "Six or seven Indians of Keokuk's band of Sac and Fox Indians who were not included in the war path under Black Hawk and other chiefs of the Sac and Fox, nation, came over from the western bank of the Mississippi river to the inhabited parts of Warren county, in said State, and unlawfully and feloniously murdered the said William Martin in the most barbarous manner.
Some commanders required juries to admit Negro members and insisted that all jurors take the "ironclad" test oath. There was some attempt at regulating the Federal courts but without much success. Since the state legislatures were forbidden to meet, much legislation was enacted through military orders.
What had those reporters seen or heard that the judges had not seen and heard? and yet the judges said they "fully concurred in the verdict of the jury." The reporters were not sworn on the Evangelists of God to give a true deliverance but the jurors were.
Ten minutes passed, and the noise and confusion increased until it became positively deafening. Suddenly, a door opened and the court entered. The judges came first, dressed in black, with plumed hats, and with red sashes about their waists. The government attorney took his seat; the jurors installed themselves noisily in their places, and the session began.
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