people were hanged for the most trivial offences, and when all the machinery of the law was in the hands of the government and directed against the individual; so that the one thing that had to be done was to protect the individual. Circumstances in the past three or four centuries have wholly changed; but the law has not changed nearly as rapidly or completely. At present there is not the slightest question as to the individual’s rights being preserved. They are amply guarded. Of course there is the possibility of error in every human affair; but speaking generally, the man accused of criminal wrong, especially the man accused of criminal wrong against the public, has every possible chance secured him; but the public has by no means the chance it ought to have. No greater service is being rendered the American public to-day than by those members of the legal profession whose great good fortune it has been to stand forth as prominently identified with the prosecution of crimes against the state. When I say crimes against the state I not only refer to crimes like those of bribery and corruption committed by any public official, but I mean such a crime as murder, as any similar hideous misdeed, where the offence is not merely against the individual, but against the entire community. It is right to remember the interests of the individual, but it is right also to remember the interests of that great mass of individuals embodied in the public, in the government. It is unfortunate that we have permitted practices that were necessary three hundred years ago for the protection of innocent people to be elaborated, to be perverted, so that they become a means for allowing criminals to escape the punishment of their criminality. We urgently need in this country methods for expediting punishment, methods for doing away with delay, methods which will secure to the public an even chance with the criminal. I do not ask any more; if we can get an average of just fifty per cent of the criminals we will be pretty nearly all right; for that will give the public an even chance with the criminal whose offence is against the public. At present the right of appeal is in certain cases so abused as to make it a matter of the utmost difficulty to ultimately punish a man sufficiently rich or sufficiently influential to command really good legal talent. I am speaking of what I know, for I am speaking with very keenly in my mind experiences during the past three years in trying to get at certain public offenders who have been indicted, and some of whom it has been almost impossible to get into the jurisdiction of the courts in Washington in order to try them. There are others whose cases are still on appeal who profit by interminable delays. I feel that the man who offends against the state occupies a position rather worse than that of any other criminal, from the very fact that he is a man who attacks everybody instead of just