Connecticut western news., 1873-01-24
Prisoners among the French.

The French have an ingenious system for compelling prisoner, by a process akin to that whereby stone is gradually worn away by the constant dripping of water upon it, to prove him. self guilty before trial. Their criminal procedure begins with an inquisition, of which the inquisitor is an official, called the .jIge d'instruction. This per sonage is unknown to other than French jurisprudence, and is only to be compar- ed with the men who, amid the solitude of dungeon-walls, administered the rack and the thumb-screw in olden Spain. A man accused of any offence, however innocent he may be, is subjected to the mental torture inflicted by the j,tge d'iaa- struction, and is not seldom worried, out of mere weariness and pain, into statements which afterward appear to accuse him on the public trial. This inquisition is of so democratic nature that 1t is undergone by distinguished and obscure prisoners alike. For the past four or five months Marshall Ba- zine has been the victim of this persis- tent, tireless, pitiless dripping of close interrogatory and vigilent cross-examin- ation; and it is newonder that, as those who have been admitted to him allege, his hair has thinned and whitened, his color has gone, and he has the aspect of feeble and disheartened old man. Day after day he takes his seat at desk in his prison-house; the cold and stern minister of the law confronts him; no one else is by except the judges clerk, not even the prisoners counsel; and, amid the solitude of locked doors and carefully guarded corridors, question after question, searching into the min utest events of .his life, into the inner most springs of motive, and the most hidden impulses of the heart, falls upon him, until the passage. of hours thus employed forces him to sink back dumb and exhausted. Every answer is noted, word for word; mistatement, an as- sertion made when off his guard, a feeb ly-uttered "no" or "yes," when he is so wearied that he knows not what he is asked, are placed on irreyocable record, and will enter into the indictments when the judgement-day arrives. Otherwise, the lot of the capitulator of Metz, even supposing he is guilty of the worst that is charged against him, is deserving of commiseration. Few criminals are the victims of more severity. He is con- stantly subject to the rudeness, not only of his jailer, but of the higher officials under whose charge he is placed. He enjoys the luxuries of private mansion, his table is we'll supplied, at certain times he is permitted to walk in the neighboring garden; but the luxury of the companionship of friends, and even the sympathetic offices of his kindred, are, for the most part, denied him. It is easier to gain access to the President of the Republic than to the accused marshal. Only one day in the week is his wife permitted to visit him, and then only for two or three hours. These things seem to indicate that French law reverses the English maxim, and that a prisoner must be considered guilty, un- less he can withstand the mental and physical strain of the instruction, and prove himself innocent against the most formidable obstacles; nor do the benefcent influences, supposed to be- long to republic, strikingly appear in the persistent harshness with which the marshal has been pursued by his re- morseless inquisitor, and the long delay and suspense he is suffering from the postponement of his trial. .. s.,.