A SIGN OF THE TIMES

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jun 29, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 26.

A SIGN OF THE TIMES.

As it was with backslidden Israel in ancient times, so it is in the world to-day. The Lord, through His prophet Isaiah, complained that “judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off; for truth is fallen in the street, and equity can not enter. Yea, truth faileth; and he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey; and the Lord saw it, and it displeased Him that there was no judgment.” And as to justice and equity in our own time, the San Francisco News Letter has this to say on jury-bribing:—

Jury-bribing scandals are exploding so often in the courts of San Francisco, and are so seldom followed by the punishment of anybody that they have ceased to be regarded as sensations. They point out, however, so many defects in the system, and argue so loud a state of public morals, as to raise anew grave doubts concerning the merits of that Anglo-Saxon institution—the right of every man accused to trial by his peers. Lately we had in a certain case a flash-in-the-pan charge of attempted embracery, and still more recently there has come a much more direct charge of the same kind—this time a specific accusation against a person plainly identified. To make the case more aggravated, the man on whom black suspicion rests, is an officer of the court, whose justice was sought to be tampered with. Moreover, it was an affair of the Chinese quarter—an affair of murder done cold-bloodedly for hire, and there was, and is no lack of money in the case to procure the commission of any degree of crime. It is significant that the bail of the alleged briber, $5,000, was put up promptly in cash.