Equally worthy to be copied, is the Massachusetts mode of constituting _juries_. Lists of all persons qualified to serve, are kept by the town-clerks; from which, just before a court, the town quota of jurors is drawn by lot: and no one is compellable to serve oftener than once in three years. _They are paid for their service._ Against juries thus formed, I heard no complaints, of partiality, corruption, or undue ignorance. They receive a compensation, which at least defrays their reasonable expenses; and if there be still some burthen, it is borne equally by all, and recurs at such long intervals, as to be absolutely unfelt. How different is our plan, of sending out the sheriff just before a trial, to gather in the sweepings of the court-yard! Suitors and witnesses, attending perhaps for the tenth time, in hopes of having their causes determined--strangers from other counties, nay, travellers from other states--tipplers from the tavern porch--the nearest merchants, mechanics, and farmers, torn suddenly and capriciously from their employments--such is the medley, produced by a system as oppressive to most of the jurors themselves, as it is subversive of the important ends for which they are empanneled. One is really tempted to believe, that in adhering so pertinaciously to a system so obviously defective and so easily remedied, our statesmen have been governed by a fixed design to bring jury-trial itself into disrepute. Wiser in another respect also than we, these "Bay folk" have no courts (except for cases of twenty dollars or less) held by _men who have not themselves studied the science they are to expound_: no parallel to our county courts--those _crack_ tribunals of some great men, whose admiration arises either from the want of intimate knowledge--they having ranged generally in a higher sphere--or from their enjoying over that bench an _influence_, flattering to their vanity, and blinding to their judgments. How long will the public attention sleep--how long will the hand of reform be palsied--when will an attempt be made to cure the unfitness of these courts for the weighty, multifarious, and difficult functions entrusted to them?--the ludicrous, if it were a less mischievous, uncertainty of their decisions, owing to their ignorance of any fixed rules by which to decide?--the delays, so fatal to justice, that attend their unsteady ministration?--the ruinous accumulation of costs, besides harassment and loss of time in dancing attendance upon them through years of litigation?