cases:  the case of the Common People vs. the Devil—­so nominated.  The second criminal is all that coworked with the accused as involved in his nature, in his temptation, and in his act.  If I could have arraigned all the other men and women who have been forerunners or copartners of the accused as furthering influences in the line of his offence, I should gladly have prosecuted them for their share of the guilt.  But most of the living who are accessory can no more be discovered and summoned than can the dead who also were accessory.  You have left the third criminal; and the State is forced to single him out and let the full punishment fall upon him alone.  Thus it does not punish the guilty—­it punishes the last of the guilty.  It does not even punish him for his share of the guilt:  it can never know what that share is.  This is merely a feeling of mine, I do not uphold it.  Of course I often declined to defend also.”

They returned to this subject another afternoon as the two sat together a few days later: 

“There was sometimes another reason why I felt unwilling to prosecute:  I refer to cases in which I might be taking advantage of the inability of a fellow-creature to establish his own innocence.  I want you to remember this—­nothing that I have ever said to you is of more importance:  a good many years ago I was in Paris.  One afternoon I was walking through the most famous streets in the company of a French scholar and journalist, a deep student of the genius of French civilization.  As we passed along, he pointed out various buildings with reference to the history that had been made and unmade within them.  At one point he stopped and pointed to a certain structure with a high wall in front of it and to a hole in that wall.  ‘Do you know what that is?’ he asked.  He told me.  Any person can drop a letter into that box, containing any kind of accusation against any other person; it is received by the authorities and it becomes their duty to act upon its contents.  Do you know what that means?  Can you for a moment realize what is involved?  A man’s enemy, even his so-called religious enemy, any assassin, any slanderer, any liar, even the mercenary who agrees to hire out his honor itself for the wages of a slave, can deposit an anonymous accusation against any one whom he hates or wishes to ruin; and it becomes the duty of the authorities to respect his communication as much as though it came before a court of highest equity.  An innocent man may thus become an object of suspicion, may be watched, followed, arrested and thrown into prison, disgraced, ruined in his business, ruined in his family; and if in the end he is released, he is never even told what he has been charged with, has no power of facing his accuser, of bringing him to justice, of recovering damages from the State.  While he himself is kept in close confinement, his enemy may manufacture evidence which he alone would be able to disprove; and the chance is never given him to disprove it.”