[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—There is, I am
led to believe, a severely practical aspect of this matter upon which you have not touched. A prominent barrister once informed me that the defence of poor persons indicted for capital offences is often paid for and sometimes only rendered possible by this traffic in "confession," " life- stories " and such "sob-stuff." Considering that the Crown thinks it worth while to bring forward all its great guns, in the person of enormously overpaid law officers, to secure a convic- tion, the chances of the man or woman in the dock, sometimes a starveling commercial traveller or a clerk's wife, would be slight indeed were they not able to brief a correspondingly brilliant advocate. Without the large sums paid by the sen- sational Press for the accused's story, many an innocent person would have gone to the gallows and many an acquitted person would have remained ruined for life by the expense of proving his innocence. The fault here lies, therefore, as it does with most things in this country, with our institutions. Instead of paying preposterous sums to the law officers, let the crown create a fund for the defence of the accused, or pay his costs
when it loses, as any civil litigant has to do.
The Press of England is not good but the laws of England
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