Of the interminable train of shames and brutalities entailed by this pernicious system, I shall mention here only a single one—­the sentencing and punishment of an accused person in the midst of the proceedings against him, and while his guilt is not finally and definitively established.  It frequently occurs that a man convicted of crime in one of the lower courts is at once hurried off to prison while he has still the right of appeal to a higher tribunal, and while that appeal is pending.  After months and sometimes years of punishment his case is reached in the appellate court, his appeal found valid and a new trial granted, resulting in his acquittal.  He has been imprisoned for a crime of which he is eventually declared not to have been properly convicted.  But he has no redress; he is simply set free to bear through all his after life the stain of dishonor and nourish an ineffectual resentment.  Imagine the storm of popular indignation that would be evoked in America by an instance of so foul injustice!

* * * * *

In the great public square of Itsami, the capital of Tortirra, stands a golden statue of Estari-Kumpro, a famous judge of the Civil Court.[2] This great man was celebrated throughout the kingdom for the wisdom and justice of his decisions and the virtues of his private life.  So profound were the veneration in which he was held and the awe that his presence inspired, that none of the advocates in his court ever ventured to address him except in formal pleas:  all motions, objections, and so forth, were addressed to the clerk and by him disposed of without dissent:  the silence of the judge, who never was heard to utter a word, was understood as sanctioning the acts of his subordinate.  For thirty years, promptly at sunrise, the great hall of justice was thrown open, disclosing the judge seated on a loftly dais beneath a black canopy, partly in shadow, and quite inaccessible.  At sunset all proceedings for the day terminated, everyone left the hall and the portal closed.  The decisions of this august and learned jurist were always read aloud by the clerk, and a copy supplied to the counsel on each side.  They were brief, clear and remarkable, not only for their unimpeachable justice, but for their conformity to the fundamental principles of law.  Not one of them was ever set aside, and during the last fifteen years of the great judge’s service no litigant ever took an appeal, although none ever ventured before that infallible tribunal unless conscientiously persuaded that his cause was just.

    [2] Klikat um Delu Ovwi.