fair: that
you may conversely be put at the _risk_ of any penalty if they desire
to put you at that risk; for the modern secret police being ubiquitous
and privileged, their opponent can be decoyed into peril at the will
of those who govern, even where the politicians dare not prosecute him
for exposing corruption.

Once the citizen has been put at this peril--that is, brought into
court before the lawyers--whether it shall lead to his actual ruin or
no is again in the hands of members of the legal guild; the judge
_may_ (it has happened), withstand the politicians (by whom he was
made, to whom he often belongs, and upon whom his general position
to-day depends). He _may_ stand out, or--as nearly always now--he will
identify himself with the political system and act as its mouthpiece.

It is the prevalence of this last attitude which so powerfully affects
the position of the Free Press in this country.

When the judge lends himself to the politicians we all know what
follows.

The instrument used is that of an accusation of libel, and, in cases
where it is desired to establish terror, of criminal libel.

The defence of the man so accused must either be undertaken by a
Member of the Legal Guild--in which case the advocate's own future
depends upon his supporting the interests of the politicians and so
betraying his client--or, if some eccentric undertakes his own
defence, the whole power of the Guild will be turned against him under
forms of liberty which are no longer even hypocritical. A special
juryman, for instance, that should stand out against the political
verdict desired would be a marked man. But the point is not worth
making, for, as a fact, no juryman ever has stood out lately when a
political verdict was ordered.

Even in the case of so glaring an abuse, with which the whole country
is now familiar, we must not exaggerate. It would still be impossible
for the politicians, for instance, to get a verdict during war in
favour of an overt act of treason. But after all, argument of this
sort applies to any tyranny, and the power the politicians have and
exercise of refusing to prosecute, however clear an act of treason or
other grossly unpopular act might be, is equivalent to a power of
acquittal.

The lawyers decide in the last resort on the freedom of speech and
writing among their fellow-citizens, and as their Guild is now
unhappily intertwined with the whole machinery of Executive
Government, we have