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liberty because we have a lot of laws upon our statute books that are there only to be disregarded and would have to be repealed instantly if enforced.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 institutions have their limitations, and that, however theoretically perfect a government of laws may be, it must be administered by men whose chief regard will not be the idealization of a theory of liberty so much as an immediate solution of some concrete problem.

Not that the matter, after all, is particularly important to most of us, but laws which exist only to be broken create a disrespect and disregard for law which may ultimately be dangerous.  It would be perfectly simple for the legislature to say that a citizen might be arrested under circumstances tending to create a reasonable suspicion, even if he had not committed a crime, and it would be quite easy to pass a statute providing that the commissioner of police might “mug” and measure all criminals immediately after conviction.  As it is, the prison authorities won’t let him, so he has to do it while he has the opportunity.