the unsworn reporters told the government Maguire was an innocent man;
while judge and jury told the government--_swore_ to it--that he was a
guilty murderer!

What was the government to do? Was it to act on the verdict of
newspaper reporters who had happened to be present at this trial,
and not on the verdict of the jury who had been solemnly sworn in the
case? Behind the reporters' verdict lay the huge sustaining power of
almost universal conviction, mysteriously felt and owned, though as
yet nowhere expressed. Everyone who had calmly and dispassionately
weighed the evidence, arrived at conclusions identical with those of
the Press jury, and utterly opposed to those of the sworn jury. The
ministers themselves--it was a terribly embarassing truth to own--felt
that the reporters were as surely right as the jurors were surely
wrong. But what were they to do? What a frightful imputation would
public admission of that fact cast upon the twelve sworn jurors--upon
the two judges? What a damning imputation on their judgment or their
impartiality! Was it to be admitted that newspaper reporters could
be right in a case so awful, where twelve sworn jurors and two judges
were wrong?

And then, look at the consequences. The five men were convicted
in the one verdict. There were not five separate verdicts, but
one indivisible verdict. If the (jurors') verdict were publicly
vitiated--if the government confessed or admitted that verdict to be
false--it was not one man, but five men, who were affected by it.
To be sure the reporters' jury, in _their_ verdict, did not include
Allen, O'Brien, Larkin, and Shore; but was it to be conveyed by
implication that omission from the reporters' verdict of acquittal was
more fatal to a man than inclusion in the verdict of guilty by a sworn