Now, this strange _Jury system_, boasted of as the _Palladium_ of Liberty by the English Barbarians, strikes my poor mind as something very cumbersome, irrational, and hurtful. The criminal class may well esteem it, for it seems exactly contrived to set the criminal at liberty, and to vex, terrify, annoy, and confuse everybody else. Witnesses themselves often fare more hardly than the actual criminal! and Society is shocked by needless and reiterated exposures of every particular of dreadful things to no rational purpose--unless to give fees to Lawyers and a host of busy officials, who live and fatten in these horrors. One might suspect that the whole machinery was contrived by the Lawyers (called _criminal_) to effect their purpose--that is, to protect their friends and supporters; the numerous men, women, and half-grown youths swarming everywhere, and known as the _criminal class_. Another unjust custom is when a man offends a Judge, he is not at once brought before him for reproof and proper correction. No; for his disrespect he is compelled to pay a _fine_ [tsig] in money which may beggar his innocent family, or prevent his creditors from obtaining their dues; or, _unable_ to pay, must lie in prison till it _be paid_, or until released by the angry Judge. Thus making the innocent to suffer! How much better in our _Flowery Land_, where disrespectful conduct is at once reprimanded and, if the disrespect be marked, punished on the spot, in the presence of the magistrate, and under his paternal direction. These may serve to illustrate usages not readily referable to any principle. They are rooted in old customs, when general ignorance and universal poverty made the mass one, and when simplicity and directness were natural. They are retained now in an artificial and totally different state of society, for no better reason than the English Barbarians have for other abuses and enormities--_they support the fungi which cling to them_! And the upper classes find their interests concerned in maintaining things as they are. The lower classes, too ignorant to see, are made to believe that nothing in human Wisdom and experience excels these very Laws and customs! The Barbarian stolidity, too, in the well-to-do classes, supports these singular views as to the perfection of the Laws and system of administration. These classes constantly mistake this _stolidity_ for solidity of character. When an evil is unmistakable, none the less, instead of removing it, they say, "Better bear those ills we have than fly to others we know not of!" (Quoting from their great Shakespeare.) But they do not stop to consider if it must necessarily follow that when one quits one ill he flies to _another_. As if one with a sore finger should refuse to apply any remedy to the _finger_ for fear he might thereupon find a sore upon his leg!