It is no longer his only to maintain. It has become, as it were, embodied in popular morality, been made the basis of popular hopes, and a test under which popular faith or approval is bestowed on a great variety of ways and means of living. Such a man is bound to defend himself from the instant at which he finds the assaults on him begin to tell on the public conception of his character. Dignified reserve is a luxury in which it is not permitted to him to indulge; and when he comes to defend himself, it must not be with the calculating shrewdness of the strategist or tactician. The only rules of evidence of which he can claim the benefit are the laws of the human mind. The tribunal, too, before which he seeks reparation should not be what the state supplies only, but the very best he can reach, and it should, if possible, be composed of men with no motive for saving him and with no reason for hating him, and with such training and experience as may best fit them for the task of weighing his enemy's charges and his own excuses and explanations. His course before such a tribunal, too, should be marked by ardor rather than by prudence. He should chafe under delay, clamor for investigation, and invite scrutiny, and put away from him all advisers whose experience is likely to incline them to chicane or make them satisfied with a technical victory. Such men are always dangerous in delicate cases. He should not wait for his accuser to get in all his case if the substantial part of it is already before the court, because his answer ought not, as in a court of law, to cover the complaint simply and no more. It ought to contain a plain unvarnished tale of the whole transaction, and not those parts only which the accusation may have touched, because his object is not only to wrest a verdict of "not proven" from his judges, but to satisfy even the timid and sensitive souls whose faith in their idols is so large a part of their moral life, not only that he is not guilty, but that he never even inclined toward guilt. PHYSICAL FORCE IN POLITICS