ived from a defendant railway
company a rate on grain shipments lower than the rate open to all
shippers. The trial was in the United States District Court for the
Northern District of Illinois, and Judge Gresham chucked the scoundrel
into jail. He naturally applied to the Supreme Court for relief, and
that high tribunal gave joy to every known or secret malefactor in the
country by deciding--according to law, no doubt--that witnesses in a
criminal case can not be compelled to testify to anything that "_might
tend_ to criminate them _in any way_, or subject them to _possible_
prosecution." The italics are my own and seem to me to indicate, about
as clearly as extended comment could, the absolutely boundless nature
of the immunity that the decision confirms or confers. It is to be
hoped that some public-spirited gentleman called to the stand in some
celebrated case may point the country's attention to the state of the
law by refusing to tell his name, age or occupation, or answer any
question whatever. And it would be a fitting _finale_ to the farce if he
would threaten the too curious attorney with an action for damages for
compelling a disclosure of character.

Most lawyers have made so profound a study of human nature as to think
that if they have shown a man to be of loose life with regard to women
they have shown him to be one that would tell needless lies to a jury--a
conviction unsupported by the familiar facts of life and character.
Different men have different vices, and addiction to one kind of
"upsetting sin" does not imply addiction to an unrelated kind. Doubtless
a rake is a liar in so far as is needful to concealment, but it does
not follow that he will commit perjury to save a horsethief from the
penitentiary or send a good man to the gallows. As to lying, generally,
he is not conspicuously worse than the mere lover, male or female; for
lovers have been liars from the beginning of time. They deceive when it
is necessary and when it is not. Schopenhauer says that it is because of
a sense of guilt--they contemplate the commission of a crime and, like
other criminals, cover their tracks. I am not prepared to say if that
is the true explanation, but to the fact to be explained I am ready to
testify with lifted arms. Yet no cross-examining attorney tries to break
the credibility of a witness by showing that he is in love.

An habitual liar, if disinterested, makes about as good a witness
as anybody. There is r