A belief that the course of criminal justice is slow and uncertain, that the chances are all in favor of the defendant, and that he has but to resort to technicalities to secure not only indefinite delay but generally ultimate freedom, breeds an indifference amounting almost to arrogance among law-breakers, powerful and otherwise, and a painful yet hopeless conviction among honest men that nothing can prevent the wicked from flourishing.  Honesty seems no longer even a good policy, and the young business man resorts to sharp practices to get ahead of his unscrupulous competitor.  In some localities the uncertainty and delay attendant upon the execution of the law is the alleged and maybe the actual, cause of the community crime of lynching.  Even where the administration of justice is seen at its best many people who have been wronged believe that there is so little likelihood that the offender will after all be punished that the cheapest and easiest course is to let the matter drop.  All this gives aid and comfort to the powers of darkness.

The widespread impression as to the uncertainty of the law is not entirely a misapprehension.  “We have long since passed the period when it is possible to punish an innocent man.  We are now struggling with the problem whether it is any longer possible to punish the guilty.”  It is a melancholy fact that at the present time “penal statutes and procedure tend more to defeat and retard the ends of justice than to protect the rights of the accused.”

The subject of criminal-law reform is too extensive to be discussed here even superficially, but historically the explanation of existing conditions is simple enough.  The present overgrown state of the criminal law is the direct result of our exaggerated regard for personal liberty, coupled with a wholesale adoption of the technicalities of English law invented when only such technicalities could stand between the minor offender and the barbarous punishments of a bygone age.  We forget that the community is composed of individuals, and we tend to disregard its interests for those of any particular individual who happens to be a prisoner at the bar.  We revolted from England and incidentally from her system of administering the criminal law, by which the defendant could have no voice at his own trial, where practically every crime was punishable with death, and where only the Crown could produce and examine witnesses.  Every one will have to agree that the English system was very harsh and very unfair indeed.  To-day it is better than ours, simply because its errors have been systematically and wisely corrected, without diminution in the national respect for law.  When we devised our own system we adopted those humane expedients for evading the law which were only justified by the existing penalties attached to convictions for crime,—­and then discarded the penalties.  We were through with tyrants once and for all.  The Crown had always been opposed to the defendant and the Crown was a tyrant.  We naturally turned with sympathy towards the prisoner.