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Of course the lawyer is pleased. The French juryman it is said, while de ciding conscientiously, " will never condemn or acquit a prisoner on considerations of the public good, but solely for some reason drawn from his own experience." The passing of a counterfeit half franc is severely dealt with, because a juryman has suffered from this crime; but the mother who gets rid of a natural child is dealt with, with leniency. What would this waif do but "burn hayricks," if it should grow up? The French rule of law that reverses our Anglo-Saxon rule, and which makes the guilt and not the innocence of the accused person presumptive, is a well known feature. Some day it will be reversed. The brutality of judges who can side with plaintiff or de fendant, as they choose, and who can badger and browbeat witnesses, before they can know the real merit of a case, astonishes English-speaking people. The fact, too, as was seen in the Zola trial, that the specta tors, and particularly the military people, having no status but that of spectators, can break into court proceedings with loud talk, and make a general beer-garden of the court room, seems not only outrageous but un civilized. At the same time it is not denied that a great deal of even-handed and deli cate justice is done by the French courts. Perhaps in most cases — excepting, of course, where a national or military passion

is aroused — the issue of justice in decisions is quite well accomplished. In the Zola trial — a secret proceeding — the evidence was frivolous and could not con vict anybody of anything in an English or American court. It was a disgrace, too, in being secret, and in stifling all evidence that would make condemnation of the ac cused uncertain. A fair trial under AngloSaxon jurisprudence, as one writer says, "must be a public trial," with " proofs given in the prisoner's presence." Fitzjames Stephens says that in French courts there are " not only no rules of evi dence like ours, but there are none at all." Witnesses can say what they please; things irrelevant, hearsay, or malicious. But French procedure is simply what the English procedure was three centuries ago, says the "Nation," when Raleigh was tried. The judges, attorney general and all " went for each other then." A trial might be a Kil kenny fight. The improvement of English methods Stephens ascribes to the fact that the English government grew strong enough after its Revolution in 1688 to bear the dis pensation of justice. The " Nation " thinks that if this theory be true, it can be said, in view of it, that it is because the French gov ernment is not strong and secure in its power, that its jurisprudence is so backward 'and faulty. It fears in other words, to " give in dulgence to accused persons."