27 May 1808 8

- The case is - that under in this state of things it is in the power of any single individual in the station of Juryman to command a verdict, and there to the conviction of all harbour a false one, thus by the voluntary perjury of one, forcing producing the involuntary perjury eleven others to perjure themselves.

How then is a receipt, nor that one unobvious one

by which any man party who either already proffesses or can continue manages so as to gain a single individual to seek a proper a single individual out of twelve jurymen, may command the verdict. To its other properties this inessential function of the institution adds therefore that of being an incentive encouragement to corruption, and that of the most powerful kind.

A story which current upon this occasion, and the design of which when related has commonly been that of recommending these factors to public favor in the character of a security to the innocent Englishmen's lives, an institution arrangement of the most nation friendly and conducive to the ends of justice, may in this reason true or false, serve the purpose of illustration.

A man is indicted for murder. He is innocent, but by a regular concurrence of circumstances, the evidence, being chiefly of the circumstantial kind bears is known to bear strong against him. By the force influence of the known circumstances The real author of the death is screened from . This concurrence tortures him. One death howsoever produced, sat heavy on it: and now the death of another person, altogether innocent, and with whom he himself had had no quarrel, is about to be added to the load. What (says he to himself) shall I do to save him? - I have hit upon it. &