that was not relevant to the issue. As yet, the courts had not learned to exclude incom petent testimony. The witnesses made long speeches, and altogether these old trials re mind one much of the recent Dreyfus trial in France. In course of time, counsel was admitted to assist accused persons in their defense and to examine the witnesses for them. But as yet the accused alone was given the right of addressing the jury. For said an old judge : "No one knows his deeds as well as the accused himself." These rights were but slowly extended. Even as late as 1760, we find that an accused person was compelled to conduct his own defense, examine and crossexamine the witnesses, where the issue tried was on his defense of insanity. It was not until the last half of the century, just closing, that the rights of the accused, as we understand them, became recognized and established in England. These rights did not come to the accused as the result of any positive legislative enact ment, but came rather through the efforts of the courts in the administration of justice. The London Spectator speaking but little more than a decade ago, upon the occasion of the removal of the last of the restrictions upon the rights of the accused, said in regard to the ancient court procedure : " The law was reduced to a game of mixed chance and skill, presided over by justice, who was very properly represented as blind, as she had al ways to be taking leaps into a subjective darkness." In passing judgment upon these early Eng lish courts and upon the slow development of the rights of the accused, we must not forget that these courts existed at the same time with the Inquisition : and that, unjust as may have been the method of procedure, it was far in advance of that of Continental Europe. Nor were these early courts, with their somewhat barbaric procedure wholly unsuited to the time in which they existed.

The people were not ready for our modern judicial procedure. Government was based upon force; and the courts formed no excep tion to the rule, that only those instrumen talities of government that showed that they had power and force behind them commanded the respect of the people. The history of much that we have consid ered is the history of our own law before it was transplanted to American soil. It is of interest to note that the fear of courts and lawyers, that such proceedings as we have considered had engendered among the people of England, came to this country with the early Americans. Several of the American colonies passed acts denying lawyers the right to sit in their legislative assemblies, while others thought to scotch the lawyer, if not to kill him, by forbidding that any one take pay for giving advice or pleading for an other in court. In all American jurisdictions, we believe, the accused is given the right to testify in his own behalf. In most, if not all, of the states statutes have been passed declaratory of this right, but in many states these laws have been put upon the statute books within the memory of men still in active practice. The history of the modification of the rules of evidence and procedure governing the rights of accused persons shows how pro foundly such matters are influenced by the spirit of the time. In time of tyrannical kings the courts seem to be at a standstill as regards these matters, again at the time of the Puritan Revolution or at the time of the coming of William of Orange or in the years following the Declaration of Independence, the onward progress is marked. Most of the advances made, most of the rights se cured, have come without positive legislative enactment, but rather by that slow and sub tle process by which ideas of justice are transmutted into rules of law to protect the rights of man.