ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the most important—that of the juries of the French Court of Assize. These juries afford an excellent example of the heterogeneous crowd that is not anonymous. Juries furnish a good example of the slight importance of mental level of different elements composing a crowd, so far as the decisions it comes to are concerned. The power of crowds is to be dreaded, but the power of certain castes is to be dreaded yet more. Crowds are open to conviction; castes never are. Like all crowds, juries are very strongly impressed by sentimental considerations, and very slightly by argument. The chief concern of a good counsel should be to work upon the feelings of jury, and, as with all crowds, to argue but little, or only to employ rudimentary modes of reasoning. By dint of insight and experience the counsel reads the effect of each phrase on the faces of the jurymen, and draws his conclusions in consequence.
