Herald Of The Times

The Masonic Juror. In our paper of the 19th ult. we stated in a short article, that a question was brought up to the consideration of the Common Pleas Court, at its recent session, precisely similar to the question which was argued during the first week of the term, in settling which the Court then determined that Bateman Monro, who was a juror, could not sit in the case, because he and the defendant were both masons—and that now the Court did permit him, to sit on the trial of the case last referred to. The editor of the Providence Daily Advertiser, the great leader and High Priest of Anti-masonry in Rhode-Island, then lauded that decision to the skies, and took the ground that Monro in that case and under the circumstances attending it, was no more competent to sit on that trial, than he would have been if he had been convicted of perjury, or any capital crime. And this same great reformer has taken us to task for having written that article, and says that "had the sapient Herald consulted any law student in Newport, he might have had his difficulty removed." Why really Mr. censor Hallett, you yourself, though a learned Counsellor at Law, have not removed the difficulty suggested by us—a difficulty that must strike every candid and disinterested man, as one of no ordinary character. The decision of the Court in rejecting Monro was predicated upon the oaths he had taken, being inconsistent, and conflicting with his civil oath. And this same Mr. Hallett in speaking of that decision, and in his daily abuse of masons, has said in substance over and over again, that masons feel their masonic oaths to be paramount to all other oaths, and that they, therefore, cannot do justice between a brother mason and one who is not a mason. Now can it be pretended by any person except Mr. Hallett, that if a man had been convicted of perjury, theft, or any other crime by which his civil rights had been affected, that the Court knowing the facts, could consistently with their duty to the public, permit such a man to sit in a case as a juror, simply because the parties did not object to him—we think not. But we wish it to be understood that we do not undertake to open a dispute with the "sapient" editor of the Daily Advertiser. We confess readily and frankly that we are afraid of that gentleman, especially in a legal disputation. An editor who takes it upon himself to abuse every other man that presumes to differ from him in politics, religion, masonry, or antimasonry :— An editor who abuses every Court in the land as their decisions may happen to suit the standard he has adopted and promulgated for the world, or at least the christian world, to be governed by :—An editor who reviews with great sang froid the decisions of Judge Story, and deals out law lectures to that eminent jurist with the same sort of straight forward confidence, as he would to one of his own law students':—An editor who declares it to be "improper for a lawyer to refuse to make any objection which his client might wish him to make in a case," whether the motion was a proper and decent motion or not:—An editor who declares it to be an insufferable "assumption" in a mason to refuse to take his paper, tho that paper was unceasing in its abuse of masons and masonry:—An editor, in fine, who is continually making war upon every cotemporary who does not in all things "hurrah for the Providence Daily Advertiser, the Rhode-Island American --and Statesman--and Gazette-and Microcosm-and last, and we should say 'though not least,' the Anti Masonic Free Press"—we say that we are afraid of such an editor.