emptation, and in his act. If I could have arraigned all the
other men and women who have been forerunners or copartners of the
accused as furthering influences in the line of his offence, I
should gladly have prosecuted them for their share of the guilt.
But most of the living who are accessory can no more be discovered
and summoned than can the dead who also were accessory. You have
left the third criminal; and the State is forced to single him out
and let the full punishment fall upon him alone. Thus it does not
punish the guilty--it punishes the last of the guilty. It does not
even punish him for his share of the guilt: it can never know what
that share is. This is merely a feeling of mine, I do not uphold
it. Of course I often declined to defend also."

They returned to this subject another afternoon as the two sat
together a few days later:

"There was sometimes another reason why I felt unwilling to
prosecute: I refer to cases in which I might be taking advantage of
the inability of a fellow-creature to establish his own innocence.
I want you to remember this--nothing that I have ever said to you
is of more importance: a good many years ago I was in Paris. One
afternoon I was walking through the most famous streets in the
company of a French scholar and journalist, a deep student of the
genius of French civilization. As we passed along, he pointed out
various buildings with reference to the history that had been made
and unmade within them. At one point he stopped and pointed to a
certain structure with a high wall in front of it and to a hole in
that wall. 'Do you know what that is?' he asked. He told me. Any
person can drop a letter into that box, containing any kind of
accusation against any other person; it is received by the
authorities and it becomes their duty to act upon its contents. Do
you know what that means? Can you for a moment realize what is
involved? A man's enemy, even his so-called religious enemy, any
assassin, any slanderer, any liar, even the mercenary who agrees to
hire out his honor itself for the wages of a slave, can deposit an
anonymous accusation against any one whom he hates or wishes to
ruin; and it becomes the duty of the authorities to respect his
communication as much as though it came before a court of highest
equity. An innocent man may thus become an object of suspicion,
may be watched, followed, arrested and thrown into prison,
disgraced, ruined in his busin