erson charged with
crime to be innocent, either in Delhi, Pekin, Moscow, or New York. Under
proper circumstances we believe him guilty. When he comes to be tried
the jury consider the evidence, and if they are reasonably sure he is
guilty they convict him. The doctrine of reasonable doubt is almost as
much of a fiction as that of the presumption of innocence. From the
time a man is arrested until arraignment he is quizzed with a view to
inducing him to admit his offence or give some evidence that may help
convict him. Logically, why should not a person charged with a crime
be obliged to give what explanation he can of the affair? Why should he
have the privilege of silence? Doesn't he owe a duty to the public the
same as any other witness? If he is innocent he has nothing to fear; if
he is guilty--away with him! The French have no false ideas about such
things and at the same time they have a high regard for liberty. We
merely cheat ourselves into thinking that our liberty is something
different from French liberty because we have a lot of laws upon our
statute books that are there only to be disregarded and would have to be
repealed instantly if enforced.

Take, for instance, the celebrated provision of the penal laws that the
failure of an accused to testify in his own behalf shall not be taken
against him. Such a doctrine flies in the face of human nature. If a
man sits silent when witnesses under oath accuse him of a crime it is an
inevitable inference that he has nothing to say--that no explanation of
his would explain. The records show that the vast majority of accused
persons who do not avail themselves of the opportunity to testify are
convicted. Thus, the law which permits a defendant to testify in reality
compels him to testify, and a much-invoked safeguard of liberty turns
out to be a privilege in name only. In France or America alike a man
accused of crime sooner or later has to tell what he knows--or take
his medicine. It makes little difference whether he does so under the
legalized interrogation of a "juge d'instruction" in Paris or under the
quasi-voluntary examination of an assistant district attorney or police
inspector in New York. It is six of one and half a dozen of the other if
at his trial in France he remains mute under examination or in America
refrains from availing himself of the privilege of testifying in his own
behalf.

Thus, we are reluctantly forced to the conclusion that all human
inst