particularly, in important criminal cases, which are usually protracted; and the jury were kept in comparative close condition, because their time was too valuable, and their business interests required their constant attention.  They preferred, therefore, to pay the fine imposed, in case they were unable to prevail upon the Judge to excuse them.  Jury fees were inconsiderable in comparison with their daily profits; but it was the loss of time from their business which mainly actuated them.  Yet these fees were sufficient to pay a day’s board and lodging, and to the many who were out of employment, serving on a jury was the means to both.  There is, in every large community, the class known as professional jurymen — hangers about the Court, eagerly waiting to be called.  There were men of this kind then; there are more than enough of them still loitering about the Courts, civil and criminal.  San Francisco is not the only city in the United States in which defendants in grave criminal cases have recourse to every conceivable and possible means, without scruple, to procure their own acquittal, or the utmost modification of the penalty, by proving extenuating circumstances, or that the indictment magnifies the crimes.  This was true of 1856; here, as elsewhere in the land; it is equally true now.  Had the merchants and solid citizens then drawn as jurors, fulfilled their duty to the cause of justice, to the conservation and maintenance of law and order, they would have had no cause or pretence for the organization which they formed.  The initial fault was attributable to themselves; the jury-packing they complained of was the direct consequence of their own neglect of that essential duty to the State, in the preservation of law and order; and they cannot reasonably or justly shift the onus from themselves upon the Courts.

Concerning the frauds in election:  yes, there were frauds, outrageous frauds, at every election; repeaters, bullies, ballot-box stuffing, and false counts of the ballots to count out this candidate and count in the one favored of the “boys.”  More than one member of the Vigilance Executive Committee had thorough knowledge of all this, for the very conclusive reason that more than one of them had engaged in these frauds, had not only participated in them directly and indirectly, but had actually proposed them; employed the persons who had committed the frauds, and paid these tools round sums for the infamous service.  The reward of these employers and accessories before, during and after the frauds, was the office that was coveted; and the “Hon.” prefixed to their names was as the gilt which the watch stuffer applies to the brass thing he imposes upon the greenhorn as a solid gold watch.  Out of the Committee, of the Executive Committee, the detectives of that body might have unearthed these honorable and virtuous purifiers and reformers; with them, perhaps others whose frauds were no less wicked and criminal; but in business transactions, and not in political affairs.