preferred, therefore, to pay the fine imposed, in case they were unable to prevail upon the Judge to excuse them. Jury fees were inconsiderable in comparison with their daily profits; but it was the loss of time from their business which mainly actuated them. Yet these fees were sufficient to pay a day's board and lodging, and to the many who were out of employment, serving on a jury was the means to both. There is, in every large community, the class known as professional jurymen--hangers about the Court, eagerly waiting to be called. There were men of this kind then; there are more than enough of them still loitering about the Courts, civil and criminal. San Francisco is not the only city in the United States in which defendants in grave criminal cases have recourse to every conceivable and possible means, without scruple, to procure their own acquittal, or the utmost modification of the penalty, by proving extenuating circumstances, or that the indictment magnifies the crimes. This was true of 1856; here, as elsewhere in the land; it is equally true now. Had the merchants and solid citizens then drawn as jurors, fulfilled their duty to the cause of justice, to the conservation and maintenance of law and order, they would have had no cause or pretence for the organization which they formed. The initial fault was attributable to themselves; the jury-packing they complained of was the direct consequence of their own neglect of that essential duty to the State, in the preservation of law and order; and they cannot reasonably or justly shift the onus from themselves upon the Courts.