In speaking of the lax conditions of our courts, a recent writer says: “The machinery of our courts seems to be passing slowly and inevitably into disrepute. Processes wrought out by wise and noble-minded men for the protection of life and property and the dispensation of justice, have been seized upon again and again by unscrupulous pettifoggers, and every technicality of the entire legal procedure has been converted into a loophole through which some scalawag has escaped. The country swarms with unhung murderers, and with thieves who walk the streets at noon unmanacled, who ought to be wearing striped suits inside of prison walls. When murder trials drag their weary lengths through the disgusting weeks and months of the year, only to end at last in a new trial, or in a pardon issued by some sentimental fool who has reached the Governor’s chair, is it to be wondered at that hot-headed men lose respect for statutes and judges and begin to talk of taking the law into their own hands? It is high time that our judges and lawyers were awake, and took measures to reform the present processes of criminal jurisprudence so as to make the punishment of crime both swift and certain.” It is a great mistake to shield rich criminals from their just desserts, as is sometimes done. Punishment should be meted out to all alike at all hazards, else it will have no terrors for the wrongdoer. Criminals must be impressed with the dignity and majesty of the law—no matter what is their social or commercial standing. A few years ago, Roland B. Molineux had a hard battle for his liberty. He was always brave and optimistic, and believed all alone that in the end he would be vindicated. He must have spent about twenty months in the Tombs, and the same length of time in the death house awaiting the decision of the Court of Appeals. As I had always taken a deep interest in the young man, I called to see him in the death house. Here he manifested the same hopeful spirit he had shown all along. During his long confinement it looked sometimes as if fate was conspiring against him, but thanks to his gritty father, who stuck so nobly by him, and the matchless eloquence of Governor Black, the undisputed Demosthenes of the New York Bar, he was finally acquitted. In this trial, which was fairly conducted, Governor Black was master of the situation, and conquered. From this time, either in civil or criminal trials, the Governor was the peer of any lawyer in the land. It must also be said that there was another gentleman, who filled no inconspicuous part in the vindication of Molineux, and that was Judge Olcott, who was a peacemaker and diplomat of the highest order. Greasing the Machinery of the Law Frequently the prosecutor in a criminal court, under the cloak of having a duty to perform, proceeds to do it with the vengeance of a fiend, and the bias and prejudice of a persecutor, and perhaps with murder in his heart.