Page:The Art of Cross-Examination.djvu/16

THE ART OF CROSS-EXAMINATION Modern juries, especially in large cities, are composed of practical business men accustomed to think for themselves, experienced in the ways of life, capable of forming estimates and making nice distinctions, unmoved by the passions and prejudices to which court oratory is nearly always directed. Nowadays, jurymen, as a rule, are wont to bestow upon testimony the most intelligent and painstaking attention, and have a keen scent for truth. It is not intended to maintain that juries are no longer human, or that in certain cases they do not still go widely astray, led on by their prejudices if not by their passions. Nevertheless, in the vast majority of trials, the modern juryman, and especially the modern city juryman,—it is in our large cities that the greatest number of litigated cases is tried,—comes as near being the model arbiter of fact as the most optimistic champion of the institution of trial by jury could desire.

I am aware that many members of my profession still sneer at trial by jury. Such men, however,—when not among the unsuccessful and disgruntled,—will, with but few exceptions, be found to have had but little practice themselves in court, or else to belong to that ever growing class in our profession who have relinquished their court practice and are building up fortunes such as were never dreamed of in the legal profession a decade ago, by becoming what may be styled business lawyers—men who are learned in the law as a profession, but who through opportunity, combined with rare commercial 14