lie in gaol for an indefinite period,-is only liable to a fine of fifty francs. And this fine is to be levied--on whom? Not on the officer who executed the warrant, but on the greffier (registrar) through whose office it passed!

In cases where only what is called la peine correctionelle is incurred, a summons is issued, (mandat de comparution,) which is an order to appear for the purpose of undergoing interrogatories. If the party does not appear, a mandat d'amener is executed; and, in case of resistance, the officer may call in the aid of an armed force. But the code peremptorily enjoins that the interrogatory is to take place within twenty-four hours at least. This provision, as must necessarily happen where the legislator does nothing more than enter a vague direction on the statute book, is shamelessly evaded. It is the daily prac tice, as if in mockery of that direction, to convey the party to a prison where he remains several days before he is interrogated. Nay, it often happens, even after the interrogatory, when, according to the code, he ought either to be discharged, or committed for trial, that he is kept in imprisonment under that convenient, but indefinite fiction, en état de mandat d'améner.

The juge d'instruction is the only magistrate who can legally commit, and that only by a mandat de depot, or a mandat d'arrêt. As to the prisons themselves, they would furnish a mass of details disgusting and sickening to humanity. In the departments, they are crowded, infected, and damp. In many of them, twenty or thirty out of a hundred have perished annually, of epidemic disorders, arising from neglect and uncleanliness. The gaolers, seldom the friends of man,' carry the rigours of their office to a wanton and tyrannical excess. Men of letters confined for libels and other political offences, and persons detained only for debt, are doomed to a close and inevitable contact with the vilest criminals of both sexes. M. Beranger+ mentions a fact, which is but too well authenticated; we would gladly disbelieve it, if we could. A young lady of high birth and elevated rank, had, shortly after the Bourbon Restoration, been condemned, for a political offence, to peine perpetuelle: but, so scanty were the accommodations of the prison, that she was obliged to endure, night and day, the society, and to hear the converse of twelve abandoned women. That Writer heard her, as he tells us, breathe her complaints against the moral torture which was thus inflicted upon her. I was on the very 'point,' she said, of suffering capital punishment, and I saw

* Ib. art. 112. + Ib. art. 107. and 111.

"De la Justice Criminelle en France," Par M. Béranger. Paris. 1818. p. 585.

⚫ those who were convicted with me, marched to the scaffold. Death indeed was terrible to my apprehension; but the miseries I am now undergoing, are a thousand times worse; for the language which I am compelled to hear from the depraved wretches around me, is a slower and more lingering death than that from which I was saved. I envy the fate of 'my friends!' It is true, that the juge d'instruction is directed to visit the prisons in his arrondissement; and every president of assizes is also required to inspect the maisons de justice. These duties have dwindled into an idle formality, for no penalty attaches to the neglect and non-execution of them.

We promised to say something of the mise au secret, or secret confmement ;-that stain of French justice, that reproach of a gallant and enlightened nation! If we describe it as it exists in the fulness of its horrors at this very moment, we are conscious that we shall make a more than usual demand upon the faith of our readers. It is well known, that the question, that savage relic of the old law of France, was finally abolished on the 9th October, 1789. But, from the fancied necessity of obtaining confessions, or the revelations of accomplices in certain cases, there has gradually grown up a new species of torture, under which the stoutest frame and the most stubborn courage must at last sink. The facts which establish the existence of this merciless procedure, are beyond all controversy; and although we would indulge, for the honour of our common nature, a reluctance to believe it, yet, the details of its frequent practice are too numerous and well authenticated, to admit even of that dubious solace.

The victim of this accursed torture is thrown into a narrow dungeon, damp and paved with stones, and from which fresh air is entirely excluded. If a ray of light finds its way into this gloomy cavern, it is only through the intervals of a small grated window, or rather hole pierced through the wall. The furniture is one miserable French blanket. Neither chair nor table is permitted, so that the prisoner is obliged to stand upright, or lie down. Every employment in which the mind might find a slight escape from its miseries, books, paper, pens, are strictly excluded. A scanty portion of bread is all his aliment, and even that portion is sometimes designedly withheld from him. From time to time, he is led out of this sepulchral cell to undergo an interrogatory; but his recollections are confused, and his answers perplexed and contradictory. The hesitations, the embarrassments of the wretch are turned. by this beneficent process into fresh heads of accusation. There are instances of its having been continued for 150 days. M. Béranger, whose work we have just cited, was present at a

a trial before a court of assizes. The offence was a political one, and the principal proofs, except those which were attempted to be extorted from the prisoners, were furnished by the agents of police.

This tor

You contradict yourself," said the president, addressing one of the prisoners," in many of your answers." "Sir," answered that unhappy being, "I have undergone so many interrogatories, that I hardly know what I am saying. I have been au secret!! ture I suffered 100 days. For fifty hours I received no food, and thrice in that time I was interrogated. The last time was at midnight, and I could scarcely stand for hunger. When I was carried back, I asked for bread. It was refused as being beyond the usual hour of distribution. I remained six weeks without change of linen or water to wash in. My wife tried frequently to bring me a few necessary articles;-in vain. My three first interrogatories were succeeded by twenty others. If the scaffold had then been offered me, I should have thought it a mercy. My reason was shattered. When the judge interrogated me, I had lost my recollection. You hesitate,' said he; you contradict yourself; you are agitated then you are guilty. Now, Mr. President, can you be surprized, if you find some contradictions in my answers." The appearance of the man bore full testimony to the sufferings he described. The crowd shuddered with horror. A loud murmur burst forth, and it was with some difficulty that order could be restored.'

It is nugatory to deny the existence of this dreadful practice, because it rests upon no direct enactment in the code. If it actually exists, no matter whether it is avowedly sanctioned, or arises out of a legal ambiguity, France has gained little by the solemn abolition of torture in 1789. It is, in truth, a revolutionary revival of torture adopted in the worst of times, and is now one of the saddest memorials of that guilty period.

After this melancholy episode, we resume our delineation of a French criminal process, of which we have only entered into some of the preliminary formalities. The first step after a summons or apprehension, is the interrogatory of the prisoner. It is remarkable that the Revolution, in the fermentation of which so many dreadful abuses were worked off, should have left this odious feature of the old law untouched. The interrogatory, however, of the ancient regime was of a much milder character. It was, indeed, conducted in secret, as at present, but the jurists divided interrogatories into immediate and suggestive; the former being such as bore directly on the subjectmatter, the latter being such insidious and circuitous questions as answer to our cross-examinations of witnesses. The former kind were, then, the only ones permitted: a single suggestive interrogatory vitiated the whole proceeding. At pre

sent, not only is this odious part of the French law carried on in secret, but the magistrate who puts the interrogations, invariably displays all his professional skill and acuteness in making the accused party betray himself. Not unfrequently the examination takes place at night, when the prisoner is suddenly awakened out of his sleep, and in a state of mind far from being sufficiently unclouded to undergo it; when it is not uncommon to tell him that the matter is already detected, that his accomplices have revealed every thing, and that it will no longer avail him to deny his guilt. All his answers, taken at different examinations, are put together, and afterwards form a part (unhappily too important a part) of the proceedings.

We can scarcely move a step in travelling through the present mode of criminal proceeding, without finding traces of the old law. Of these, the most obnoxious usages are those which respect the examination of witnesses; but will it be imagined, that a witness is summoned, interrogated by the juge d'instruction, and his answers written down by the greffier,

and that all this passes neither in the presence of the prisoner nor of his counsel? A malicious witness, therefore, may depose to the most unfounded falsehoods without check or restraint;-a dark, tortuous, disingenuous procedure alike at variance with common sense and justice. Hence, also, a witness, his depositions being thus taken down and remaining on record as memorials against himself, will naturally adhere to them afterwards, with the tenacity of a man jealous of his credibility, and anxious to prop it up by inflexibly and obstinately persisting in his first allegations.

These proceedings, viz. the examination of the prisoner and that of the witnesses, (both private,) being now completed, they are next submitted to the chamber of council, consisting of three judges, one of them being the juge d'instruction himself, who has hitherto conducted the whole business, from the warrant to the present stage of the proceeding. There is an inherent self-love in our natures, that makes us expert sophists where our own penetration or judgement may be called in question, and renders us more enamoured of our blunders, than disposed to repair them. It would have been sound policy to exclude this officer from the chamber, where, in fact, he sits in judgement on his own acts. Be this as it may, he makes his report to the chamber, who sit with closed doors. The prisoner is not present, either personally or by counsel;so that if the juge d'instruction, who has himself reduced the several depositions to writing, (and that too in his own style and language,) has designedly spread any colouring or exag

geration over it, the prejudice must inevitably be imparted to his colleagues, who can only see with his eyes, or judge with his feelings. If two of the judges deem the proofs insufficient, the accused is hors de cour, (out of court,) and there is an end of the proceedings: if sufficient, they then determine the class or category of the offence; viz. whether it is one which induces criminal, or only correctional penalties,—a distinction which, in some degree, corresponds to our classification of offences-into felonies and simple misdemeanours. Here, however, we start a strange and unaccountable absurdity. We have just seen, that a majority of the three is required to decide as to the sufficiency of proof; but, if a single voice pronounces the offence liable to peines afflictives ou infamantes, (corporal or infamous,) the culprit is sent before the criminal tribunal. Nine years experience have testified, says M. Béranger, that this single voice is that of the juge d'instruction. The proceedings are now ripe for the procureur du roi. But what can more strikingly demonstrate the clumsiness of the machine, than the cumbrous intervention of the chamber of council, consisting of three judges, in which a single person only is empowered to qualify the offence, and determine thereby the jurisdiction where it is cognizable,-a question by far the most important in the preliminary part of the proceedings?

At length, however, and for the FIRST TIME, the accused party is allowed to say something for himself, and to give in such memorials as he thinks fit. Up to this time, he has remained a stranger to the proceedings against him, and, specifically speaking, has neither been made acquainted with his accuser nor his accusation. He has been kept also in the same ignorance of the names and depositions of the witnesses. He has had to fight, with his eyes blind-folded, an armed adversary. To the poor, the drawing up of their memorials is a heavy and insupportable expense; and five days only are allowed, before the chamber of accusation, consisting of five judges, (the next link in this interminable chain of procedure,) comes to a determination. No other document forms the basis of that determination than the report of the procureur generale, who, as soon as their decision is notified to him, proceeds to draw up the acte d'accusation, or indictment. It is by means of this instrument, in fact, that the prisoner becomes first acquainted with the crime laid to his charge. It is the basis, moreover, of all the future proceedings, and is the most important document in the whole process. But, in the drawing of this paper, all the technical rule and regular principle, the