ndemn
the iniquity of the administration of criminal justice in that country!)
the suspect or undesirable receives a polite official call or note, in
which he is invited to leave the locality as soon as convenient. In
New York he is arrested by a plainclothes man, yanked down to Mulberry
Street for the night, and next afternoon is thrust down the gangplank
of a just departing Fall River liner. Many an inspector has earned
unstinted praise (even from the New York Evening Post) by "clearing New
York of crooks" or having a sort of "round-up" of suspicious characters
whom, after proper identification, he has ejected from the city by the
shortest and quickest possible route. Yet in the case of every person
thus arrested and driven out of the town he has undoubtedly violated
constitutional rights and taken the law into his own hands.

What redress can a penniless tramp secure against a stout inspector of
police able and willing to spend a considerable sum of money in his own
defence, and with the entire force ready and eager to get at the tramp
and put him out of business? He swallows his pride, if he has any, and
ruefully slinks out of town for a period of enforced abstinence from the
joys of metropolitan existence. Yet who shall say that, in spite of the
fact that it is a theoretic outrage upon liberty, this cleaning out of
the city is not highly desirable? One or two comparatively innocent men
may be caught in the ruck, but they generally manage to intimate to the
police that the latter have "got them wrong" and duly make their
escape. The others resume their tramp from city to city, clothed in the
presumption of their innocence.

Since the days of the Doges or of the Spanish Inquisition there has
never been anything like the morning inspection or "line up" of arrested
suspects at the New York police head-quarters.* (*Now abolished.) One by
one the unfortunate persons arrested during the previous night (although
not charged with any crime) are pointed out to the assembled detective
force, who scan them from beneath black velvet masks in order that they
themselves may not be recognized when they meet again on Broadway or
the darker side streets of the city. Each prisoner is described and his
character and past performances are rehearsed by the inspector or head
of the bureau. He is then measured, "mugged," and, if lucky, turned
loose. What does his liberty amount to or his much-vaunted legal rights
if the city is to be mad