“The accused is of all men the most miserable, unless the law gives him an equal chance to defend himself. Time was when the courts could hear privately the witnesses against the prisoner, and then call him into court to answer charges, which he never had heard of, made upon the testimony of witnesses he never had seen, without any legal means of compelling his own witnesses to come to court to testify for him and without any lawyer to speak for him against the trained counsel for the government. Many of these abuses had been weeded out before the Constitution was adopted.”—Bacon’s _American Plan of Government_, p. 272. “Almost all the reform needed to make criminal procedure humane and just, has been incorporated into the constitutions and laws of the states during the first era of independence; but the people of the United States bad no such safeguards.”—Bacon’s _American Plan of Government_, p. 273. “The charge to be answered by the defendant on trial in a criminal court must be clear, explicit, and definite. The prosecution has no right to compel the accused to show that he is a good member of society.”—_7 Peters Rep. 138._ 68 Constitution of the United States, Amendment VI. “In judicial procedure a witness is one who is duly called upon to testify under oath as to matters within his knowledge. By rules of procedure some persons are disqualified from testifying on account of want of mental capacity as, for instance, idiots, insane persons, and infants who have not attained the age of discretion. Others who are qualified to testify may be of such character that their testimony is not entitled to the weight which should be given to some other witness. Furthermore, a witness may be so related to the subject matter or to the parties as that in the particular case his testimony should not be received, or should be received under limitations as to its credibility and weight. And finally the competency of testimony offered is regulated by rules of evidence fixed by law.” “Under constitutional guaranties of religious freedom, the religious belief of a witness cannot be made a ground for his disqualification to testify.” “As to criminal prosecution, it is usually provided in state constitutions as it is in the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the Federal Constitution that the accused shall not be compelled to be a witness against himself and that he has a right to be confronted with the witnesses against him and to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor. These are privileges which the accused may waive.”—Emlin McClain, quoted in _Cyclopedia of American Government_, Vol. III, p. 693.