a criminal offence," but by modern,
more liberal interpretation, it has been extended to any compulsory
testimony, whether given in a criminal proceeding or not. This, with
the principle protecting a man's private affairs from inquisition, is
expressed in our Fourth and Fifth Amendments, the former prohibiting
unreasonable searches and general warrants, and the latter providing
that no one shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness
against himself, nor deprived of property without due process of law,
and it has reasonably been argued that an inquisition into a person's
business or book of accounts is such deprivation of his property
without due process of law, at least when applied to a natural person.
I find no legislation limiting these important principles, but on
the contrary the tendency in modern statutes and modern State
constitutions is to extend and generalize them. Of such is the famous
clause of the recent constitutions of Kentucky and Wyoming that
"absolute arbitrary power over the lives, liberty, and property
of freemen exists nowhere in a republic, not even in the largest
majority." In view of the frequently successful efforts of trust
magnates and others to escape indictment or punishment by some
enforced revelation of their affairs given after a criminal proceeding
has has been commenced or before a grand jury, legislation is now
strongly urged to withhold them immunity in such cases. This would
relegate us to the early state of things where they would simply
refuse to answer, so that it may be doubted if, on the whole, we
should gain much. The right of an Englishman not to criminate himself
is too cardinal in our constitutional fabric to be questioned or to be
altered without subverting the whole structure. Practically it would
seem as if a little more intelligence on the part of our prosecutors
would meet the evil. Corporations themselves are never immune; and
unless the wicked official actually slept with all the books of the
corporation under his pillow, it would be hard to imagine a case where
some corporate clerk or subordinate officer could not be subpoenaed
to produce the necessary evidence. Indeed, as has been well argued by
leading American publicists, the sooner the public learns to go behind
the figment of the corporation, the screen of the artificial person,
into the human beings really composing it, the quicker we shall arrive
at a cure for such evils as may exist. Legislation