politics. If the political field is that in which the seeds of advantage to one's coun try — indeed to humanity itself— are sown and cultivated, then surely, no man, what ever may be his calling, can be out of place in that field. Indeed every man's duty is to be in it, and to be learning the art of culti vating it. Parties exist only because of a divergence of opinion as to means. The end is the same in all, or ought to be, and
Lord Coleridge was independent enough to exercise his divine right of discussion as to the means by which that end can be encom passed. Although, on account of his " ad vanced " views regarding those means, he was not at all times a courted guest in "society," he will always be remembered as a judge who would not grant to the rich favors which were withheld from the poor, in cases over which he was called to preside.
TRIAL BY NEWSPAPER. By A. Oakey Hall. OF late years a new method of trying the guilt or innocence of any ac cused person has come into popular procedure. Mediaeval methods of trial by battle or by ordeal have often received quaint or acrimonious criticism from modern writers, whose expressions of wonderment at such methods were tempered only by referring these to more or less uncivilized times. Yet now, in an age of great enlight enment, prevails trial by newspaper, which is not free from barbarity in many respects. Concurrent with preliminary trials of ac cused before coroners or magistrates or grand juries, generally occur trials by the newspaper press, attended by marshalling of allegations, by comments, by verdicts and by theoretical Sentences; editors acting there in in the nature of judges. The procedure long ago became recognized as existent and affective by criminal courts in their sanction ing " challenges to the favor" of summoned jurors on assigning as cause impressions or opinions of guilt or innocence of an accused formed by jurors from perusal of preliminary trials by newspapers. The effect of the influence of such trials in delaying the legal trials of indicted persons has been recently shown upon the arraign
ment in Chicago of the man who assassinated its last Mayor; when citizens summoned by the thousands upon jury panels were, by reason of having attended, as it were, upon newspaper trials, found to be so biased as not to be considered impartial jurors. This necessity for impartiality was of a growth through many hundred years; for doubtless when jurors of a vicinage were first summonable and used, those who were already familiar with the criminal occurrences about to be investigated and adjusted were regarded as the most available. The original formula of a juror's oath, "true verdict give according to the evidence," came in time to have the element of absolute impartiality included in the adjective "true." And long ago the decision of a learned judge that ,! the mind of a juror about to be sworn should be like a blank sheet of paper" became heartily endorsed by the Bar. But the probing of the mind of a challenged juror afterwards grew so severe and technical that it became almost a proverb among lay men, that the stupider a citizen was the better he was fitted to adjudicate the guilt or innocence of an accused. Time was when a newspaper reporter or editor cheerfully submitted to an apparent
