tensive to be discussed
here even superficially, but historically the explanation of existing
conditions is simple enough. The present overgrown state of the criminal
law is the direct result of our exaggerated regard for personal liberty,
coupled with a wholesale adoption of the technicalities of English law
invented when only such technicalities could stand between the minor
offender and the barbarous punishments of a bygone age. We forget that
the community is composed of individuals, and we tend to disregard its
interests for those of any particular individual who happens to be a
prisoner at the bar. We revolted from England and incidentally from her
system of administering the criminal law, by which the defendant could
have no voice at his own trial, where practically every crime was
punishable with death, and where only the Crown could produce and
examine witnesses. Every one will have to agree that the English system
was very harsh and very unfair indeed. To-day it is better than ours,
simply because its errors have been systematically and wisely corrected,
without diminution in the national respect for law. When we devised our
own system we adopted those humane expedients for evading the law which
were only justified by the existing penalties attached to convictions
for crime,--and then discarded the penalties. We were through with
tyrants once and for all. The Crown had always been opposed to the
defendant and the Crown was a tyrant. We naturally turned with sympathy
towards the prisoner.

We gave him the right of appeal on all matters of law through all the
courts of our States, and even into the courts of the United States,
while we allowed the People no right of appeal at all. If the prisoner
was convicted he could go on and test the case all along the line,--if
he was acquitted the People had to rest satisfied. We stopped the mouth
of the judge and made it illegal for him to "sum up" the case or discuss
the facts to any extent. We clipped the wings of the prosecutor and
allowed him less latitude of expression than an English judge. Then we
gazed on the work of our intellects and said it was good. If an ignorant
jury acquitted a murderer under the eyes of a gagged and helpless judge,
we said that it was all right and that it was better that ninety-nine
guilty men should escape than that one innocent man should be convicted.
Yes, better for whom? If another murderer, about whose guilt the highest
court in one