The writer has no intention of attempting to discuss or estimate the efficacy of religion or ethics as restraining influences. A certain limited proportion of the community would not commit crime under any circumstances. It is enough for them that the act is forbidden by the State even if it be not really wrong from their own personal point of view. Side by side with these very good people are a very large number who wear just as fashionable clothing, have the same friends, attend the same churches, but who would commit almost any crime so long as they were sure of not being caught. If we had no criminal law we should soon discover who were the hypocrites. But for an overwhelming majority of the community something more practical than either religion, ethics, or philosophy is necessary to keep them in order. They must be convinced that the transgressor will surely be punished,--not some time, not next year or the year after, but now. Not, moreover, that his way will be merely hard; but that he will be put in stripes and made to break stones. Hence the necessity for a vigorous and adequate criminal law and procedure which shall command the respect and loyalty of the community, administered by a fearless judiciary who will hold jurors to a rigid and conscientious obedience to their oath. There is nothing sacred about an archaic criminal procedure which in some respects is less devised for the protection of the community than for the exculpation of the guilty. The portals of liberty would not fall down or the framers of the constitution turn in their graves if the peremptory challenges allowed to both sides in the selection of a jury were reduced to a reasonable number, or if persons found guilty of crime after due process of law were compelled to stay in jail until their appeals were decided, instead of walking the streets free as air under a certificate of "reasonable doubt" issued by some judge who personally knew nothing of the actual trial of the case. As things stand to-day, a thief caught in the very act of picking a pocket in the night-time may challenge arbitrarily the twenty most intelligent talesmen called to sit as jurors in his case. Does such a practice make for justice? It is even possible that the sacred bird of liberty would not scream if eleven jurors, instead of twelve, were permitted to convict a defendant or set him free, while the question of how far the right of appeal in criminal cases might properly be limited or, in default of such limitation, how far under certain conditions it might be correspondingly extended to the community, is by no means purely academic.* It is also conceivable that some means might be found to do away with the interminable technicalities which can now be interposed on behalf of the accused to prevent trials or the infliction of sentence after conviction. * "Limitation of the Right of Appeal in Criminal Cases," by Nathan A. Smythe, 17 Harvard Law Rev. 317 (1905).