The Sun.
London, England, 1847-09-02 00:00:00

ifll

LOND,ON, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 1847.

&lthough our imagination recoils from the appal-
ling crimes of the late Duke DE CHOISBUL.PEASLIN,
an imperative sense of justice compels us to refer ones

more to the consequences of his deed of bloodshed.

Additional particulars of this occurrence are published

in our columns this evening, and many of the do.

mestic secrets which have been hitherto garnered up
in the bosom of the dead Duchess, as being invested
with a sacredness too profound for utterance, are now
revealed to the whole world as the epilogue of an

awful tragedy. The diary of the unfortunate lady.
blotted with emotion, and blurriod with her tears

is printed in many instances perhaps with the same
type which " composed" the love letters of TROMAs
HENRY HOCKEIL. It is impossible to read the im-
passioned ejaculations of this excellent but ill-doomed
matron, without lamenting for her destiny. The nar-
rative bears in every detail the character of a romance,
and though the p3sa4-es of these "ImpressioLs " of the
Duche.s DE PRASLIN are broken almost to incoherence,
and written with an inartistic simplicity of language,
they occasionally breathe the affectionate intensity of

" Eloise," and the gloomy and despond•ut anguish of
the " S,lrtor Resartus." It is not, however, to the
manuscripts of the Duchess DE CHOISEUL•PRASLIN
that we would make immediate reference ; it is rather
to the judicial brutality evinced throughout the exa-
mination of her wretched husband.

civilized as France unquestionably is, her criminal
code, when contra-teri with that a RngLat,a, ii as a
code or barbarians. tier dungeons are virtually as atro-
cious rec.pta.eles 'or the accused, as the iron cages in
which her eleventh Louis incarcerated his antago-
nists. Her courts of inquiry are moveny as inhuman

as those of the Inquisition, when the victims of the
supreme authority were sunized into an acknow-

ledgment of their guilt by the wheel, the rack,
the thumbscrews, and the scavenger's daughter.
Often as this charge has been levelled against the
French system of j urisprudence, the truth of the ac-
cusation was never more deplorably enforced than
during the examination of that miserable Peer, who
has only escaped from an ignominious decapitation
upar. the scaffold, by adding to the infamy of assassins-
ttf:m the despair of suicide. Never, certainly, was in-

terrogation conducted with such consummate cruelty
With ourselves the accused is regarded as guiltless
until every circumstance of the transaction has been
debated and investigated, and every syllable of evi-
dence, whether direct or circumstantial, has been
elicited from the successive occupants of
the witness-box. By a species of magnanimity, un-
known and unappreciated among our neighbours, the
laws of England regard every man as innocent until
he is proved, upon public trial, to be guilty. Nor is
the leniency of our criminal code restricted to this ;
its generosity extends further; it requires not only
that no confession of crime shall be extorted from
those who are charged with its commission, but it actu-
ally refuses to receive any confessions of a man's cul-
pability as evidence against him, unless those con-
fessions are made after being warned that they will
tend towards his conviction. Beyond this, our judges
are empowered to grant to any destitute person ac-
cused of some serious offence the advantages of an
advocate--such advocate being compensated for the
exercise of his forensic abilities by fees drawn from
the revenues of the Government. This is carrying
out, indeed, by a beautiful punctilio the allegorical
representation of Justice ; this is, in truth, binding
up the eyes of the goddess with a bandage. Nor is
her judgment warped by this leniency. Her deci-
Mons are as inexorable ; her punishments are as de-
cisive ; he: sword is as keen ; her scales are as accu-
rately balanced.
In France, how enormous and deplorable is the
&fference ! "I here the law is not so much devoid of
benevolence as of comm, n humanity--it is not
even impart a'—it is rn r:dly oblique—it leans
to the side of severity—it takes suspicion for
testimony—it views accuse as tantamount
to conviction—it has raised the scaffold before it
has formed the tribunal. Ob-erve the dastardly
course adopted in reference to the Duke DE CUOISEUL-
IittASLIN. ' lie is con:rontel with the President of the
Court of Peers and tte members of the Commission,
and endeavours are ma,'.e to extort from his lips—
his lips, wr;thiug with a thousand emotions—the de-
claration of his own dishonour and atrocity! Great
D l the agonies of such an inquisition are only com-
parable with those inflicted by red hot pincers and
boiling As this wretched man was, in the uni-
versal conviction, most guilty, he might have been
most innocent, ard, presuming
i mi
natn innocent mats to
have good in his place, the interrogations of thei
French authorities would have been
conceived as ruthlessly articulated. Some of the
o'larges were put to the accused Duke in this
manner :
j
I recommend y. II to shorten the fatigue which
seems pre,. ot.l by milt:ng. a eonfesssion. for it ie
imp ,ssild,
.fin• you to d,ny ; you cannot dare to deny."
IL " Was your res eution tormed when you went to

be:?" wife stret!hed upon the spot
111. Was not
your w
where you had struck her fir lint time:
IV. • You inut have experienced a very distressing
moment when you
gh *ill ou had just
gltw, uon entering Unlimber,
that 'MU were coven-d with p
the bloat w
shed: and which you were obliged tp wash ~tf
V. " You are very wraelted to have committed
tliia
crime 1'
VI. Rave you not received bad advice, which im-
pelled you to this crime?
VII. " Are you not devoured with remorse, and would
it not be a sort of solace to you to have told the truth?"
VIII. " Your silence answers for yea that you are
" When you committed this frightful crime did you
think of your children?" Ste. &a. &a.
'Are these things uttered in the nineteenth century?
or are they not rather reverberations of criminal in-
quiries daring the feudalism of the dark ages ? Such
are the. *buses which Lord BROUQUAIL has to al-
phstically reprobated, such are the brew *toe