testify are convicted. Thus, the law which permits a
defendant to testify in reality compels him to testify, and a
much-invoked safeguard of liberty turns out to be a privilege
in name only. In France or America alike a man accused of
crime sooner or later has to tell what he knows--or take his
medicine. It makes little difference whether he does so under
the legalized interrogation of a "juge d'instruction" in Paris
or under the quasi-voluntary examination of an assistant
district attorney or police inspector in New York. It is six
of one and half a dozen of the other if at his trial in France
he remains mute under examination or in America refrains from
availing himself of the privilege of testifying in his own
behalf.

Thus, we are reluctantly forced to the conclusion that all
human institutions have their limitations, and that, however
theoretically perfect a government of laws may be, it must be
administered by men whose chief regard will not be the
idealization of a theory of liberty so much as an immediate
solution of some concrete problem.

Not that the matter, after all, is particularly important to
most of us, but laws which exist only to be broken create a
disrespect and disregard for law which may ultimately be
dangerous. It would be perfectly simple for the legislature
to say that a citizen might be arrested under circumstances
tending to create a reasonable suspicion, even if he had not
committed a crime, and it would be quite easy to pass a
statute providing that the commissioner of police might "mug"
and measure all criminals immediately after conviction. As it