The district attorney knows Robinson is guilty, so does everybody else, including Robinson. At last this presumably innocent man is brought to the bar for trial. The jury scan his hang-dog countenance upon which guilt is plainly written. They contrast his appearance with that of the honest Jones. They know he has been accused, held by a magistrate, indicted by a grand jury, and that his case, after careful scrutiny, has been pressed for trial by the public prosecutor. Do they really presume him innocent? Not much! They presume him _guilty_. And if by any chance Robinson puts in any defence, they require him, as a practical matter, to prove himself innocent. “So soon as I see him come through dot leetle door in the back of the room, then I _know_ he’s guilty!” as the foreman said in the old story. What good does the presumption of innocence, so-called, do for the miserable Robinson? None whatever—save perhaps to console him in the long days pending his trial. But such a legal hypocrisy could never have deceived anybody. How much better it would be to cast aside all such cant and frankly admit that the attitude of the continental law toward the man under arrest is founded upon common-sense and the experience of mankind. If he is the wrong man it should not be difficult for him to demonstrate the fact. At any rate circumstances are against him, and he should be ready to explain them away if he can. The fact of the matter is, that in dealing with practical conditions, police methods differ very little in different countries. The authorities may perhaps keep considerably more detailed and obvious “tabs” on us in Germany and Russia than in the United States, but if we are once caught in a compromising position we experience about the same treatment wherever we happen to be. In France (and how the apostles of liberty condemn the iniquity of the administration of criminal justice in that country!) the suspect or undesirable receives a polite official call or note, in which he is invited to leave the locality as soon as convenient. In New York he is arrested by a plain-clothes man, yanked down to Mulberry Street for the night, and next afternoon is thrust down the gangplank of a just departing Fall River liner. Many an inspector (without mentioning names) has earned unstinted praise (even from the _New York Evening Post_) by “clearing New York of crooks” or having a sort of “round-up” of suspicious characters whom, after proper identification, he has ejected from the city by the shortest and quickest possible route. Yet in the case of every person thus arrested and driven out of the town he has undoubtedly violated constitutional rights and taken the law into his own hands. What crimes are committed in the name of law, O Liberty!