Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/985

949 FREEDOM OF SPEECH IN WAR TIME 949 of the war or of conscription may conceivably lead to active re- sistance or insubordination. Is it not better to kill the serpent in the egg? All writings that have a tendency to hinder the war must be suppressed. Such has always been the argument of the opponents of free speech. And the most powerful weapon in their hand, since the aboUtion of the censorship, is this doctrine of indirect causation, under which words can be punished for a supposed bad tendency long before there is any probabiHty that they will break out into unlawful acts. Closely related to it is the doctrine of constructive intent, which regards the intent of the defendant to cause violence as immaterial so long as he intended to write the words, or else presumes the violent intent from the bad tendency of the words on the ground that a man is presumed to intend the consequences of his acts. When rulers are allowed to possess these weapons, they can by the imposition of severe sentences create an ex post facto censorship of the press. The transference of that censorship from the judge to the jury is indeed important when the attack on the government which is prosecuted expresses a widespread popular sentiment, but the right to jury trial is of much less value in times of war or threatened disorder when the herd instinct runs strong, if the opinion of the defendant is highly objectionable to the majority of the population, or even to the particular class of men from whom or by whom the jury are drawn.^^ It is worth our frank considera- tion, whether in a country where the doctrine of indirect causation is recognized by the courts twelve small property holders, who have been through an uninterrupted series of patriotic campaigns and are sufficiently middle-aged to be in no personal danger of compulsory military service, are fitted to decide whether there is a tendency to obstruct the draft in the writings of a pacifist, who also happens to be a socialist and in sympathy with the Russian Revolution.**' ^' " Under Charles II. [trial by jury] was a blind and cruel system. During part of the reign of George III. it was, to say the least, quite as severe as the severest judge without a jury could have been. The revolutionary tribunal during the Reign of Terror tried by a jury." i Stephen, History of the Criminal Law, 569. thousand dollars, retired from business, from pleasure, and from responsibihty for all troubles arising outside of their own family. An investigator for the defense computed the average age of the entire venire of 100 men; it was seventy years. Their average wealth was over $50,000. In the jury finally chosen every man was a retired farmer 01
 * " "As to the jury . . . they were about seventy-two years old, worth fifty to sixty