American criminal procedure is condemned as ineffective, because delay and technicality intervene on behalf of the accused. The sanction of the law is neither swift nor inexorable. Not only do "the wicked flee where no man pursueth," but the prisoner enmeshed is preserved from punishment by over-sedulous respect for his rights. Mr. Justice Holmes, in his lectures on the common law, says that the law must express the prevailing sentiment of the community. Our criminal law is commonly supposed to do so, and in consequence, critics and censors vent upon the community their japes and quirks at the present state of our criminal justice. Yet, in fact, our administration of the criminal law does not reflect or mirror the public mind upon the matter. Much of the practice, many of the forms, most of the rules and principles that are operative in the criminal courts to-day are the heritage of olden days. No adventitious condition of society, no ephemeral fashion of manners finds immediate place in jurisprudence. On the other hand, be any condition of society but general and persistent enough, it will make the impress of itself upon the body of the law. Very many states of society, and innumerable aspects of each state have appeared, transpired and vanished, so that "the place thereof knew them no more," during the course of development of our system of jurisprudence. Yet the traces of their life are visible in the structure of our legonomy, as the traceries of ancient flora and fauna are found imprinted in the deposits of phosphate that we are mining to-day. The courts are slow to assimilate the "spirit of the times." To commend itself to them, a custom or a usage, must be encrusted with the hoar of age. Though we have modified the requirement that a practice must have existed since, "the memory of man runneth not to be contrary," we are still dubious to experiment with any course which is not sponsored by tradition. Watch, therefore, the effects. Within two hundred and fifty years we have emerged from a barbarous code of punishment. Not murder and not rape alone, nor even other crimes of violence; but theft, trespass and many similar minor infractions of the law were