That's what
you'd best do; and if you don't, I wash my hands of you! What do you
say?"
What would you do? Stand on your rights, demand a full and fair trial,
prove your innocence, and be acquitted without a stain on your
character? That is the proper and righteous course for a free and
independent American citizen.
But you are not a citizen, in the first place; your civic rights are
gone for good, and instead of your innocence being assumed till your
guilt is proved, it is the other way about. Your friend the detective is
prepared, for one, to swear that to the "best of his knowledge and
belief," you are the culprit; and there is commonly a number of other
easy swearers hanging about the court room to support him. You have no
friends; on the contrary, every eye you meet is hostile. You have no
money to hire a lawyer, for that five dollars had gone before you had
mustered courage to ask for the job that got you into this trouble. And
above all, your spirit is cowed and prostrate from years in prison; you
have known the long, sterile bitterness of penal servitude, and you have
no stomach for a fight. No, you will not fight--you cannot. You will
stand up in the dock and confess to something you never did, and throw
yourself on the mercy of the court. Your friend the detective whispers
to the judge--"He's an incorrigible--he ought to get the limit!" And His
Honor gives you ten years.
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