United States or Tunisia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Questions of race, religion, politics, labor and the like have always awakened violent feelings on all sides, have made bitter partisans and strict lines of cleavage, and have made verdicts of juries and judgments of courts the result of fear and hatred. In spite of this, most of the inmates of prisons have done the acts charged in the indictments.
It would be unjust to charge all, or indeed any, of these with the narrowness of view betrayed in Johnson's verdicts on individual writers. To arrive at this perfection of sourness was a work of time; and the nature of Addison and Goldsmith at least was too genial to allow of any approach to it.
The miser becomes generous, the sceptic a believer, the honest man a criminal, the coward a hero. Examples of such transformations abounded during the great Revolution. As part of a jury or a parliament, the collective man renders verdicts or passes laws of which he would never have dreamed in his isolated condition.
Perhaps the South is becoming less susceptible to oratory; at all events this plea now sometimes fails to win a jury. Defendants are occasionally convicted, though the verdicts are usually rendered for manslaughter and not for murder. Public sentiment is not yet ready, however, to declare every intentional homicide murder.
And it is by the passionate few that the renown of genius is kept alive from one generation to another. These few are always at work. They are always rediscovering genius. Their curiosity and enthusiasm are exhaustless, so that there is little chance of genius being ignored. And, moreover, they are always working either for or against the verdicts of the majority.
We had some discussion about the Forgery Bill. We are to see the Governor and deputy-governor of the Bank, &c. The Duke is much indisposed to acquiesce in the Commons' amendment. Peel thinks that after the vote of the House of Commons no verdicts will be obtained; but may not a contrary vote of the House of Lords turn public opinion into its former course? I think it may. June 17.
A few days afterwards we accused Claudius Fuscus, a son-in-law of Classicus, and Stilonius Priscus, who had acted under him as tribune of a cohort. Here the verdicts differed, for while Priscus was banished from Italy for two years, Fuscus was acquitted.
In other cases the critic is obliged to support his journal's repute for severity, or for wit, or for morality, though he may himself be entirely amiable, dull, and wicked; this necessity more or less warps his verdicts. The worst is that he is personal, perhaps because it is so easy and so natural to be personal, and so instantly attractive.
They brought together juries chosen out of the parishes situated within the sphere of English influence "and upon the return of their several verdicts they found many and great offences committed against her Majesty's laws and proceedings.
It was no secret that in ordinary causes jurymen had sold their verdicts, and, far short of taking bribes in the direct sense of the word, there were many ways in which they could let themselves be approached, and their favor purchased. A monopoly of privileges is always invidious.
Word Of The Day