“Thou hast spoken!” agreed Mr. Tutt.  “And another reason is that the criminal law was not originally devised for the purpose of eradicating sin—­which, after all, is the state into which it is said man was born—­but was only intended to prevent certain kinds of physical violence and lawlessness—­murder, highway robbery, assault, and so on.  The church was supposed to take care of sin, and there was an elaborate system of ecclesiastical courts.  In point of fact, though there is a great deal of misconception on the subject, the criminal law does not deal with sin as sin at all, or even with wrongs merely as wrongs.  It has a precise and limited purpose—­namely, to prevent certain kinds of acts and to compel the performance of other acts.

“The state relies on the good taste and sense of decency, duty and justice of the individual citizen to keep him in order most of the time.  It doesn’t, or anyhow it shouldn’t, attempt to deal with trifling peccadillos; it generally couldn’t.  It merely says that if a man’s conscience and idea of fair play aren’t enough to make him behave himself, why, then, when he gets too obstreperous we’ll lock him up.  And different generations have had entirely different ideas about what was too obstreperous to be overlooked.  In the early days the law only punished bloodshed and violence.  Later on, its scope was increased, until thousands of acts and omissions are now made criminal by statute.  But that explains why the fact that something is a sin doesn’t necessarily mean that it is a crime.  The law is artificial and not founded on any general attempt to prohibit what is unethical, but simply to prevent what is immediately dangerous to life, limb and property.”

“Which, after all, is a good thing—­for it leaves us free to do as we choose so long as we don’t harm anybody else,” said Miss Wiggin.

“Yet,” her employer continued, “unfortunately—­or perhaps fortunately from our professional point of view—­our lawmakers from time to time get rather hysterical and pass such a multiplicity of statutes that nobody knows whether he is committing crime or not.”

“In this enlightened state,” interposed Tutt, “it’s a crime to advertise as a divorce lawyer; to attach a corpse for payment of debt; to board a train while it is in motion; to plant oysters without permission; or without authority wear the badge of the Patrons of Husbandry.”

“Really, one would have to be a student to avoid becoming a criminal,” commented Miss Wiggin.

Mr. Tutt rose and, looking along one of the shelves, took down a volume which he opened at a point marked by a burned match thrust between the leaves.

“My old friend Joseph H. Choate,” he remarked, “in his memorial of his partner, Charles H. Southmayde, who was generally regarded as one of the greatest lawyers of our own or any other generation, says, ’The ever-growing list of misdemeanors, created by statute, disturbed him, and he even employed counsel to watch for such statutes introduced into the legislature—­mantraps, as he called them—­lest he might, without knowing it, commit offenses which might involve the penalty of imprisonment.’”