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56 
who would have the police as his agents, and who would not only 
act as a check for too zealous constables, but direct the steps in the 
tracking out of a crime. 
I pass on now to say a few words upon an important change 
which is contemplated in a Bill at present referred to a Standing 
Committee of the House of Lords, I mean the Lord Chancellor’s 
Bill to amend the Law of Evidence. Its purport is as follows: 
that “every person charged with an offence, and the wife or 
husband as the case may be, of the person so charged, shall be a 
competent witness.” To the lay mind it seems the most proper 
and natural thing in the world, that if a man is accused of a crime, 
he should be asked at the earliest possible moment to give an 
explanation of the circumstances which led to his being suspected; 
but at the present time a person charged with an offence is, with 
certain statutory exceptions, incapable of testifying in his own 
behalf. Denounced by Bentham in 1827, this practice has still to 
be swept away. In the Middle Ages, ‘‘the question” meant 
torture. If a prisoner was arrested and charged and refused to 
admit his guilt, he was tortured until he confessed. There is no 
fear now of a prisoner being questioned in the old sense ; but the 
time has come when in the interests of justice and of the prisoner 
himself, he should be free to give, on oath, his own version of the 
circumstances. 
Under our present system, a prisoner is protected from all . 
judicial questioning before or at his trial, but he is prevented from 
giving evidence on his own behalf. This system has been con- 
sidered advantageous to the guilty; it avoids any appearance of 
harshness. On the other hand, questioning, or the power of giving 
evidence, is of positive assistance to innocent persons ; “for a poor 
and ill-advised man is always liable to misapprehend the true 
nature of his defence, and might in many cases be saved from the 
consequences of his own ignorance or misfortune by being ques- 
tioned as a witness.”* 
It is not that people are reluctant to lie so much as it is an 
extremely difficult matter to lie minutely and circumstantially 
* Stephen’s History of Criminal Law, 
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