JURY

We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read.
- 4th of July speech 1873

An ignorance so shining and conspicuous as yours--now I have it--go on a jury. That is your place.
- New York Weekly, 7/14/1873 (letter originally written to Josh Billings, 3/1873)

Our admirable jury system enabled the persecuted ex-officials to secure a jury of nine gentlemen from a neighboring asylum and three graduates from Sing Sing, and presently they walked forth with characters vindicated.
- The Gilded Age

The humorist who invented trial by jury played a colossal practical joke upon the world, but since we have the system we ought to try and respect it. A thing which is not thoroughly easy to do, when we reflect that by command of the law a criminal juror must be an intellectual vacuum, attached to a melting heart and perfectly macaronian bowels of compassion.
-"Foster's Case," New York Tribune, 3/10/1873