Savannah morning news. [volume] (Savannah) 1868-1887, 1884-04-06
FRANCE AND CHINA.
AN INDEMNITY TO BE DEMAND
ED FROM THE ssPIGTAILAS.'

VINO EGDOTLS AMMAN HOb Ah ~ DOAeA~N
The French Jury Systematic Eff
feet of the Weather on the Suicidal
Mania.
Correspondence Of the Morning Neacs.
PARIS, March 19.-At Bacninh, as at
Sontay, the French let the enemy escape,
so the latter naturally live to fight an
other dav, and are now being run to earth
1t remains with China to accept accom-
plished facts or to put in practice some OF
her bugaboo menaces, which people al
one time believed-on the faith of morn
ing and evening press interviews with the
MARQUIS Tseng-her capable of executing.
The Celestial empire has now on her from
tier Russia, England and France, VINO Will
in course of time improve China from the
map of Asia. If the French soldiers had
little fighting, and none at all when
compared with Teb and Tamal and Its
environs, the soldiers well merit the pro-
fessionaI recompenses promised, on ac-
count of their sufferings-a kind of per-
manent lodgings in morasses with up to
the waist in water. The men were free
to sit down and to smoke, if they could
procure a light. The French govern
ment intend to demand an indemnity
from China for aiding the Black Flags,
1t is proposed to seize Canten till the
taels be paid. A slice of the empire
north of Tonquin might be accepted as
payment, with the privilege to protect
a few outlying provinces against krou-
Mrs of the future.
A journal whose special correspondence
from Tonquin is written from AMMAN and
not concocted in Paris from the London
and American press, gives the result of
an excursion through the new addition
to Frances future Indo-Chinese Empire.
AMMAN is not an Ell Dorado. Here and
there patches of territory exist of the
Land OF Goshen type. The chief exports
are rice, the materials for betel chewing,
rice brandy, little silk, and fat young
pigs. Inc 1attel are pdCkcd Ill wicker
baskets, and fed in advance so as to keep
quiet for two or three days, till put on
board Chinese junks. Often these baskets
contain girls stolen from their parents,
and drugged with opium en- route for sale
in Chinese brothels. In 1874 France
made AMMAN present of two gunboats;
these are now in the bay of Tourane,
painted ships upon painted ocean, rot
ting away. The authorities stripped the
vessels of all their metallic mOuntings,
and inside the cannOns birds have made
their nests. That beats those swallows
which nursery historians allege built
their nests in old mems boards. The men
in this part of AMMAN have no whiskers,
and wear their hair like the women,
chignon style, and kept up with a back
comb. All the children have for clothing
is thin Irvine tied round the waist. The
grandmother of the present Queen of
Tahiti had for regal costume nothing
more than a she'll necklace, and the
Prince de JoInville brought one of such
court dresses as a present to the sOve-
reigns old clo' museum at the Louvre.
For the French, the victories of Gen.
Graham are next to nothing, and far
Outclipsed by Bacninh, where the enemy,
neither killed nor made prisoner, was al
lowed, as usual, to escape. 1t is lamenta-
BILE the irresolution and contradiction that
England displays in Egypt. 1t her aim be
to not wound French susceptibilities, it is
loves labor lost. The sooner friend John
recognizes the fact that he has no friends
in France the sooner he will confine at
tention to his own susceptibilities. The
cardinal mistake of English foreign policy
has been the excessive use of soft soap and
fiattery towards the French. Result,
something akin to contempt. France
spurns English advice; but she is not
deaf nor cynical, when England cOnsults
only her own interests and defends them
vigorously. The moral of the SueZ canal
vote ought TO be read, marked, learned
and inwardly digested by peride Albion.
English foreign policy lacks backbone;
wants clearness, decision and speaking
up, instead of Obscurity, trimming and
soft-sawder. And such ought ever be the
credO with whatever party guides the
destlnles of either old or young England.
NJ ARTEMAN, THE JUROR WHO WROTE
TO THE JOURNALS
that he was against the conviction of the
young anarchist, Morphy, is to be in
dicted for betraying the secrets of the
jury room, although he has cried n1ed
culpd. 1t was only the revolution of 1889
that endowed France with that eminently
English institution, by which the Juror is
bound by no other power save that of his
conscience. That was not a jury which
Moses composed. and ordered to judge,
with ten men, sitting at the gates of the
cities; still less was the Athenian
dicaster a jury. The French, after
time, rejected the grand jury,
and adopted instead a petty court to de-
eide if grounds existed for a prosecution,
and where the prisoner is directly exam
med by an unsympathetic Judge, his re-
plies, as well as the history of his past
life, being used against him. AS a rule,
the French Judges start with the pre-
sumption that every accused is culpable,
and strain every effort to make him con-
TESS his crime. Hence, the Importance of
jury to step between a prisOner-forti-
flying and calming him-and a prejudiced
Judge.
In France no man can be juror unless
80 years of age and in possession of his
civil and political rights, and mentally
and physically capacitated. Usurers,
those condemned for Outrages to morality
and religion, bankrupts, vagabonds, no
taries, civil servants, laborers, illiterate
persons, are exempted from serving as
jurors. A juror having served at one as
sizes is exempted from the others for a
year. The assizes sit every three months,
and on an average for fifteen days.
One juror is chosen for every 500 inhab-
itants of a circuit; from the list thus
made out 36 names, with 4 supplement-
ais. are selected for each assize; and are
published beforehand in the official ga
Zette. The Judge draws the first II names
out of an Urn, with supplemental names;
but the public prosecutor and prisoners
counsel can challenge alternately each II
names; the Is remaining in the urn be-
come then, de factO, the jury.
Neither jury nor counsel is allowed to
directly question prisoner or witness.
Such must be asked through the Judge.
The latter opens the case by the eXamina-
tion-nOt now so brow-beating as for
merlv-of the prisoner, where his life his
tory passes under the scalpel. Speeches
for the prosecution and defense completed,
the jurors retire to their room. Each
juror writes yes or no on slip of paper
and drops it into an urn. The foreman
draws each vote out. The majority of votes,
to 3, carries the verdict. If there be
five votes for and five against, with two
blanks, the verdict is s'No.v The verdict
is then signed by all the jurors, and the
foreman hands it to the court, declaring,
on his conscience, honor and before God,
that is the true finding. The voting pa
pers are burned before leaving the room.
If the number of votes be stated. that an
nuls the verdict. The foreman is the first
name drawn from the urn; Juror
who absents himself without valid cause
can be fined from 500 to 1000 francs.
THE EXTRAORDINARY MAY WEATHER
with which we are favored not only
forces trees into budding. buds into leaf,
and birds to seriously flirt, but matches
lunatics. On Sunday last no less than
five were picked up in Paris, the doctors
attributing the outbreak to the sudden
bursts of hot sunshine. 1t affected the
Communists also, as, unable to observe
''the day we celebrate perhaps in the
old style, they did so within doors. At one
meeting two orators, short of arguments
and Billingsgate, took mouthfuls of flesh
out of each others arms, having stripped
the better to express their sentiments
That and lunatic discOurses are all they
have in common. There was society OF
Irishmen who met on st. Patrick's day to
drown the Shamrock with all honOrs
Marshal MacMahOn and other semi