As long as there exists the right of appeal there is a chance of acquittal. Otherwise the right of appeal would be a sham and an insult more intolerable, even, than, to the man convicted of murder, the right to say why he should not receive the sentence which nothing he may say will avert. So long as acquittal may ensue guilt is not established. Why, then, are men sentenced before they are proved guilty? Why are they punished in the middle of proceedings against them? A lawyer can reply to these questions in a thousand ingenious ways; but there is no answer. Let the “legal fraternity” reflect that a lawyer is one whose profession it is to circumvent the law; that it is a part of his business to mislead and befog the court of which he is an officer; that it is considered right and reasonable for him to live by a division of the spoils of crime and misdemeanor; that the utmost atonement he ever makes for acquitting a man whom he knows to be guilty is to convict a man whom he knows to be innocent. The methods of our courts, the traditions of bench and bar, exist and are perpetuated, altered and improved, for the purpose of enabling lawyers as a class to exact the greatest amount of money from the rest of mankind. The laws are mostly made by lawyers, and so made as to encourage and compel litigation. By lawyers they are interpreted and by lawyers enforced for their own profit and advantage. The over-intricate and interminable machinery of precedent, overrulings, writs of error, motions for new trials, appeals, reversals, affirmations and the rest of it, is mostly a transparent and iniquitous system of exaction. What remedy would I propose? None. There is none to propose. The lawyers have us and mean to keep us.