Page:History of Journalism in the United States.djvu/82

56 performances of our greatest Geniuses. We look upon Zenger's advocate as a glorious asserter of public liberty and of the rights and privileges of Britons."

"It is, however, worth remembering, and to his honor," said Horace Binney, "that he was half a century before Mr. Erskine, and the Declaratory Act of Mr. Fox, in asserting the right of a jury to give a general verdict in libel as much as in murder, and in spite of the Court, the jury believed him and acquitted his client."

The view of Judge Cadwalader is more appreciative:

" Reform, through legislation, may be effected with little difficulty as compared with administrative reformation of jurisprudence without legislative aid. The Advocate who can effect the latter, especially where political considerations are involved, must be a mental giant. One great excellence of the system of trial by jury is that it affords the means of gradually producing such, reformations without revolutionary peril. Propositions in this argument, which were, strictly speaking, untenable as points of Anglo-American Colonial law, prevailed, nevertheless, at that day, with the jury. These propositions have been since engrafted permanently upon the political jurisprudence of this continent. If that speech to the jurors who acquitted Zenger had never been uttered, or had not been reported, the fra!mers of the Constitutions of the several states might not have been prepared for the adoption of provisions like that of the Seventh Section of the Declaration of Rights in Pennsylvania."

The immediate effect of the trial was to increase Zenger's popularity and the prestige of his paper, although