Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/269

 next century, it seems impossible to doubt that some method will be adopted by which criminal trials can be reviewed, even though the class of cases in which the necessity for review is most often mentioned now will no doubt have disappeared with the abolition of capital punishment, And it does not seem likely to be beyond the ingenuity of the coming time to discover some means by which civil cases can be settled in one trial, instead of requiring three, without danger to the justice of any individual suit.

It is sometimes questioned whether trial by jury will continue a feature of modern civilisation. The remark of a legal cynic that "the man with a good case is always safe with a judge, while the man with a bad case has always a chance with a jury," is sufficiently sound to make it a question whether juries are worth the trouble given to the members of them, and the vast amount of additional labour which their employment inflicts on the courts of which they are a feature. The conditions which make trial by jury "the blest palladium of our liberties" have passed away in civilised countries, and to a great extent in Ireland. It is no doubt characteristic of the British people that we should so long as this have retained the use of juries in civil suits, though even here there are many cases (especially in divorce and libel) where the average common