Dickens approached the matter more hesitatingly: "I wonder," he writes, "why I feel a glow of complacency in a court of justice, when I hear the learned judges taking uncommon pains to prevent the prisoner from letting out the truth. If the object of the trial be to discover the truth, perhaps it might be as edifying to hear it even from the prisoner, as to hear what is unquestionably not the truth from the prisoner's advocate. I wonder why I say, in a flushed and rapturous manner, that it would be 'un-English' to examine the prisoner. I suppose that with common fairness it would be next to impossible to confuse him unless he lied; and if he did lie I suppose he could hardly be brought to confusion too soon." This being the Victorian attitude in the matter it was hardly to be wondered at that the reform was delayed until our own day. Yet I doubt if anyone conversant with the criminal Courts would doubt that although there are cases where it has been to the disadvantage of the guilty to go into the witness box, it has been of enormous value to the innocent that he can give his own account of things to the jury. There are three recent Acts of criminal law reform which have done much to safeguard the interests of innocent men, especially if they are poor. These are the Criminal Evidence Act, 1898, the Poor Prisoners Defence Act, 1903, and the Court of Criminal Appeal Act, 1907. If we could have such an outburst of legal reform every ten years in other subjects we should be doing well. But it must not be thought that these reforms were obtained without trouble. Each was strenuously fought, year by year, for many many years before the energy and patience of the reformers were crowned with success. One would have thought that the claim of a citizen, charged with a criminal offence, to give his account of the affair to the jury, if he wished to do so, was one of those matters of elementary justice that could hardly be contended against at the end of the nineteenth century, but the fight against this privilege was really a very strenuous one. Twenty years before the reform actually came the Bill had been read a second time in the House of Commons by a majority of 109, showing, at all events, that the lay mind of the country had no doubt about what should be done. In each succeeding year, when any new offence was created by Act of Parliament, there was a special clause put in to enable a prisoner to give evidence, so that at length there were some thirty or more Acts giving a prisoner the right to give evidence. This made the state of the law, as Lord Herschell said, "utterly indefensible and ridiculous." We were living under two competing systems, whose constant absurdities were made manifest in the Courts; thus, if a man was charged with forging a trade mark he was a competent witness, if he was charged with any other forgery his mouth was closed.