Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 1

[513] of the telegraph is a man to bring the offender before the judge. What is the use of a judge? He cannot move of himself; he is powerless if you do not bring the criminals before him. But the city government of Boston, chosen by this machinery I have spoken of, says to its police officers, “Don't you furnish that judge with any criminals; shut your eyes upon them!” Then, again, if one is arrested, by any accident, what more? Why, this: the statute says that our jurymen shall be drawn from a box, in which the names of citizens of good moral character and sound judgment, free from all legal exceptions, are put. The city weeds out the jury-box on another plan. In all trials that had antislavery or temperance in them, you might be certain of one thing,--you would never see an Abolitionist nor a temperance man on the jury. If he got there, it was an accident, and there were always enough to neutralize him. It is just like the black element. We have several thousand black men in our community; you have never seen a black man on a jury but once, and that was an accident, and he was not allowed to sit, though he had been regularly drawn. Many of them are of good moral character, but their names never get into the box; or, if they get in, never come out. So of a man known distinctively as an Abolitionist; if his name goes in, it never comes out. So of a man known as a temperance man; rarely does his name come out. But liquor-dealers have always been abundant on juries; no jury was trusted alone without them. If the State furnishes good judges, and the city, at the other end, furnishes no criminals, or, when one is by chance caught, fortifies him with a jury that will disagree on his side, how is the law to be executed? As long as the city government is chosen by men whose interest is on that side, how can it be otherwise? How is the law to be executed, when you have entrusted its execution to men who do not wish or mean