utlaws. The man who violates our ideas of good taste or good manners is
sent to Coventry; the man who does you a wrong is mulcted in damages;
the sinner is held under the town pump and ridden out of town on a rail,
or the church takes a hand and threatens him with the hereafter; but if
he crosses a certain line we arrest him and lock him up--either from
public spirit or for our own private ends."

"Hear! Hear!" cried Tutt admiringly.

"Fundamentally there is only an arbitrary distinction between wrongs,
sins and crimes. The meanest and most detestable of men, beside whom an
honest burglar is a sympathetic human being, may yet never violate a
criminal statute."

"That's so!" said Tutt. "Take Badger, for instance."

"How often we defend cases," ruminated his partner, "where the
complainant is just as bad as the prisoner at the bar--if not worse."

"And of course," added Tutt, "you must admit there are a lot of
criminals who are criminals from perfectly good motives. Take the man,
for instance, who thrashes a bystander who insults his wife--the man's
wife, I mean, naturally."

"Only in those cases where we elect to take the law into our own hands
we ought to be willing to accept the consequences like gentlemen and
sportsmen," commented the senior partner.

"This is all very interesting, no doubt," remarked Miss Wiggin, "but as
a matter of general information I should like to know why the criminal
law doesn't punish the sinners--as well as the criminals."

"I guess one reason," replied Tutt, "is that people don't wish to be
kept from sinning."

"Thou hast spoken!" agreed Mr. Tutt. "And another reason is that the
criminal law was not originally devised for the purpose of eradicating
sin--which, after all, is the state into which it is said man was
born--but was only intended to prevent certain kinds of physical
violence and lawlessness--murder, highway robbery, assault, and so on.
The church was supposed to take care of sin, and there was an elaborate
system of ecclesiastical courts. In point of fact, though there is a
great deal of misconception on the subject, the criminal law does not
deal with sin as sin at all, or even with wrongs merely as wrongs. It
has a precise and limited purpose--namely, to prevent certain kinds of
acts and to compel the performance of other acts.

"The state relies on the good taste and sense of decency, duty and
justice of the individual citizen to keep him in order most of the time.