The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1899-08-27
FRANCES GREAT TRIALS.
Two Other Famous Fin de Steele
Cases Are Recalled.


From the New York Journal
Foucquet, at the end of the seventeenth
century, and Jean CALAIS, at the end of the
eighteenth century. were tried and con-
victed in France as was Dreyfus al the
end of the nineteenth,
Foucquets famous literary friends were
La Fontaine, Corneille and Nine. de Sc
vigne. Jean Calais famous literary friend
was Voltaire. Dreyfus famous literary
friends are lola and inaJole France.
Public opinion in France about the guilt
of Foucquet and of Jean Calais is divided
still. In the Revue de Paris Alfred Droz
writes of the Foucquet trial. He says:
This recital suggests a little humility.
The promoters of the pursuit of Foucquet
were a very Christian King, whose ear
was generally attentive 20 the voice of
learned conscience and of robust judg-
ment and one of the greatest ministers
that have ever presided over the govern
ment of our country.
And it was with The knowledge of these
two men-we may say at their instigation
that, with the view of obtaining a con-
demnation supposed TO be comfortable to
the superior interest of the state, subal-
terms stole documents that might have
served the cause of the accused manu-
featured others, falsifed the existing ones
and did all this under the control of two
magistrates that the confidence of their
colleagues had appointed 10 prepare the
case against him.
As for public opinion, 1t Awas divided
into two parties. Each one, without
knowledge of the facts without precise
documents, without ability to detect the
true characteristic of the affair, attrlb-
uted to itself the sight 10 derive from its
confused impressions a belief equivalent
~. 30 49,, i
Most Of those who formed an opinion
obeyed the inclination suggested to them
by their intimate dispositions, by their
professional education, by their class pref
udices whereof they We're involuntarily
the slaves"
In the National Review. f. c. Cony-
beare writes of the CALAIS trial. He says:
Il have spoken of those who, during those
three years, chose for themselves the part
of advocatus diaboh. They had the eX-
cuse of being contemporaries, of being
immersed in the current strife of the day
of living before the French Revolution, of
being at least sincere Catholics, blinded
by zeal and devoid of hypocrisy.
'Who, however. would have thought it
possible that in the year of grace 1895
when just 1856 years had passed, during
which all historians had sifted the facts
and admitted them, as related in the above
pages there should arise a Frenchmau
eager to play the part over again, and
that without eXtenuaGng circumstances;
eager to rival the Able FrerOn, who in
the AIMEE Litteraire of t7e5, earned the
scorn and moved the indignation of all
men by arguing that it was perfectly nat
ural that Calais should have murdered his
son from fanatlcism, because, forsooth,
Junius Brutus had executed his from a
sense of duty; and that, if the Kings coun-
sellers at Paris had given credit to the de-
positions of the Calais family, that merely
proved, not CALAIS innocence, but their
credulity. Our modern Freron is no other
than NJ Brunetiere, academician and edi-
tor of the Revue des Deux Mondes.
Reason, superb reason. is capricious and
cruel. The sanity righteousness of in
stlnct never deceives. In instinct is the
only truth, the only certainty that hui
manity may ever have in this illusory life
And instinct teaches that things done for
the national good are usually things done
for the individuals evil.