The Express.
London, England, 1864-08-01 00:00:00

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MONDAY EVI6IING, AUGUST it 1864.

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pleased not to prosecute the claws who con-
spired Si kill M. de Pens in s duel,
lbat *het precedent of toleratiod does not render
duelling lawfuL The laws of France. says
Paradol, with delicate irony, are " eminehtly
facultatives," i.e., arbitrary. The government
applies them where it listeth. It is vain to say
that nothing can be more innocent, more legitimate,
more indispensable than an electoral meeting. It
is vain to say that there is nothing blamable in
choosing a candidate, recommending one's friends
to vote for him, and writing to one's friends in the
provinces. The conclusive answer of the French
law is that all these things are illegal whenever the
executive power chooses to hold them so. 4t is
idle to plead that there was nothing blameworthy in
the meetings incriminated. Why, of course, if there
had been the defendants wouldnot have been accused
simply of holding an illegal meeting. They would
have been indicted for a conspiracy, rebellion, in
surrection, or something of the sort. The govern-
ment speaks in effect to the defendants just like
the brutal porter who struck a child in the face,
and when the infant expostulated, "I did nothing
to you," replied, " Why if you had I should have
served you a great deal worse." Let MM. Carnot,
Gamier Pages, and their fellow delinquents be
thankful, therefore, that their meeting was the
moat innocent in the world, but let them not, there-
fore, flatter themselves that it was legal.
I find in M. Paradol's very clever article in
this week's Courrier du Dimonehe another passage
worth citing. Speaking of the decision of a law
court that the Prefect of Police cannot be prose-
cuted for the grossly illegal confiscation of the
Duke d'Aumale's " History of the House of
Conde" without the authorisation of the Council
of State, K Paradol pleasantly says that as a
friend of progress he is delighted to see how
much modern France is in advance of imperial
Rome. In Rome, under the Cresars, there werel
two sorts of justice—one administered by the
praetors and tribunals and the other by
the Emperor and the military tribunals.
It was no uncommon thing to see a Roman matron
approach a judge and thus address him :—" Prater,
my house has been illegally invaded ; they have
taken away a statue and a manuscript, laid hands
on my husband, and carried him off to a distant
island." " Who did it 1" said the Pretor. "It was
a centurion, sent by the Prince." "Oh," said
the Pretor, "if he was sent by the Prince, I have
nothing to do with it. Lictor, call the next case."
Now the progress which K Paradol notes, after
eighteen hundred years of civilisation, is that a
suitor in the present day, instead of being
sent absolutely empty away, is told that
he may ask leave of the Council of State
to prosecute his oppressor. He may ask the prince
to redress his own justice through a council of state
of his own nomination, and if it pleases him the
thing may be done, though, to say the truth, this
does not very often happen. It is a curious fact
that when Benjamin Constant drew up the "addi-
tional act" in the last days of Napoleon's reign, he
obtained a promise which was committed to writing
in Article 50, that the law which prohibited func-
tionaries from being brought to justice without the
permission of the Council of State should be " modi-
fied." The present reign has been distinguished by
the realisation of a great many forgotten ideas and
promises of Napoleon L His legacies have been
paid to the great astonishment of his old servants',
or their heirs ; he has been buried in the Inva-
lid/a, as he wished ; his statue on the column in the
Place Vendome is clothed in a Roman toga, as he
wished. Why should not Benjamin Constant's
promise in his name, "the beet that the Emperor
ever made to France," be now likewise realised
M. Paradol illustrates the sort of justice which
French citizens may now get against function-
aries by putting the following case :—lf the
Prefect of the Police, merely because be did not
like the look of him, were to order him (K Para-
dol) to be thrown into the Seine, he would, as soon
as he got out of the water, go straight to the ordin-
ary law courts, and he makes little doubt that they
would do him justice ; but if in throwing him inso
the Seine the Prefect of Police had acted under
the orders of the Minister of the Interior, or even
of the Minister of Public Instruction, or any other
lawful superior, then—remembering the doctrine
of the court in the Duke d'Aumale's case—M. Para-
dol, if he were lucky enough to escape drowning,
would go humbly to the Council of State, well
knowing that the common law was not for him.
An electoral meeting at Marseilles was lately dis-
solved by the police. Several eminent advocates
of that city were present at it.
The criminal chamber of the Court of Caseation
rendered yesterday a very important judgment,
mirabile dicta, in favour of the liberty of the press
—or, rather, the liberty of private writing, which
the government has lately attempted to bring
within the press laws. There are in Paris a
number of ex-journalists, who write correspondence
on polygraphic sheets to various journals in the
provinces, and this accounts for the phenomenon
which now and then attracts notice of the same
article appearing simultaneously "from our own
correspondent" at Nantes and Marseilles, at
Lyons and Bordeaux. This kind of contribu-
tion to journalism has gone on with impu-
nity, subject, of course, to the responsibility
of printers and editors, ever since the coup &Etat.
But some months ago the government took it into
its head to prosecute two correspondents of this
class—MM. de St. Cheron and de Clairbois ; on
the ground that they were obnoxious to the coup
d'etat decree of Feb. 17, 1852, inasmuch as they
had " published " periodical writings treating of
political matters without permission. The Cor-
rectional Tribunal of the First Instance found
them guilty, and sentenced them to a month's
imprisonment and fines of 100 fr. each.
This sentence was confirmed by the Court of Ap-1
peal ; and at the hearing before the Court '
of Caseation, the public minister, M. Bedarrides,
argued strenuously that any periodical writing
whatever, even although not on polygraphic sheets,
but in a simple private letter, was within the scope
of the decree. This monstrous doctrine is how-
ever, now overruled by the Criminal Chamber of
the Supreme Court, which holds that a manuscript
communication addressed to the editor of a news-
paper, and to be by him used or not as he may
please, is not a publication of political matter
within the meaning of the decree of 1852.
This decision is, however, not conclusive.
The Court of Caseation, according to its invariable
practice, when it quashes a judgment, sends the
case to be tried de novo before another appeal court
of co-ordinate jurisdiction with the appeal court of
Paris. Should the second appeal court be of the
same opinion as the first, the case must be heard
before the three chambers of the Court of Cease-
lion united, and their judgment alone will be final.
If the government can reckon upon a majority of
the judges of the Court of Caseation it will cer-
tainly go on to the last resort. The present judg-
ment is a most diragreeable check, for as long as it
remains unreversed, it convicts the government of
au attempt to strain its own harsh laws against free
writing to an illegal extent.