"Do you take notice of that juryman dressed in blue?" said one of the judges at the old Bailey to Judge Nares. "Yes." "Well, then, take my word for it, there will not be a single conviction to-day for any capital offence." So it turned out. The "gentleman in blue" thought it unjust and wicked, contrary to the ultimate Purpose of law, to hang men, and he was faithful to his juror's oath in refusing to convict. Of course he did not doubt of the Fact, or the Law, only of the Justice of its Application. One day there will be a good many "gentlemen in blue." To prevent this moral independence of the jury from defeating the immoral aim of the government, or of the judges, or the legislature--the court questions the jurors beforehand, and drives off from the panel all who think the statute unfit for such application. Gentlemen, that is a piece of wicked tyranny. It would be as unfair to exclude such men from the legislature, or from the polls, as from the jury box. In such cases the defendant is not tried by his "country," but by a jury packed for the purpose of convicting him, spite of the moral feelings of the people. Sometimes the statute is so framed that the jurors must by their verdict tell an apparent falsehood, or commit a great injustice. When it was a capital offence in England to steal forty shillings, and evidence made it plain that the accused had actually stolen eight or ten times that value, you all know how often the jurors brought in a verdict of "_stealing thirty-nine shillings_."[166] They preferred to tell what seemed to be a lie, rather than kill a man for stealing fifteen or twenty dollars. The verdict of NOT GUILTY would have been perfectly just in form as in substance, and conformable to their official oath. [Footnote 166: See several cases of this kind in Sullivan on Abolition of Punishment of Death, (N.Y. 1841), 73. Rantoul's Works, 459.]