But if the State has not proved me guilty? the prisoner may ask. A fallacy, my friend; in these days you must prove your innocence. Of course the accused is convicted. No man, however innocent, can successfully combat the fourth degree. Everything has worked like a charm; but at last, after two years, perhaps, or more, the case reaches the Court of Appeals. Then the master stroke is given, the _finesse_ of which is startling even to old criminal lawyers. That the conviction has been obtained illegally is universally admitted. How will the attorney for the people induce the Court of Appeals to sustain it? Of course, the method will be in the nature of an innovation; for the fourth degree is a new thing, and just as certainly will it be something unjust. Judging others by himself, the Able Assistant will rely on the use of money. Special counsel is obtained to try to have the illegal conviction sustained in the higher courts. A man of national reputation, the leader of his party, and noted for his political influence and his willingness to use it; who, strangely enough, when high in office appointed some of the judges who are to listen to his argument, may be retained to argue before the Court of Appeals, and beg that it allow the conviction to stand. The honorable special counsel receives a great many thousands of dollars for doing this, and in one case had at last the opportunity of gratifying a little personal grudge of nearly twenty years’ standing. As the epitaph of the Western man read, “He did his damnedest; angels could do no more.” In one case I have in mind nothing could equal this person’s eloquence when arguing in the higher courts _against_ a new trial for the defendant, unless it was his effort when, a few weeks later, he insisted in a lower court that the defendant _must_ be tried again; thus proving that there are two sides to a case—the inside and outside. Consistency is a jewel, a rare one in the Criminal Court Building, County of New York, for after all this fuss and expenditure, the “good lady” who held the office of District Attorney dared not try the case, but left it to his successor. All this is not an imaginary case; it is my own. I know whereof I speak. Just consider for a moment another case recently tried. Does it not furnish further proof of the fourth degree?