acterize M-me. Humbert's inventions, and this American product is now duly incorporated into the French vernacular. Whatever may be said of the appearance of indecorum which the French tribunals often present to a stranger, they perform their functions with more directness and dis patch, and less parade of archaic forms and ceremonies, than the courts of the Englishspeaking nations, and probably, in general, not less efficiently. The French do not seem to consider a court of justice holy ground, but a place of business. It may, perhaps, be open to doubt whether sanctimony actually contributes anything, by itself, to the effi ciency of justice. In the Humbert trial there was no lack of proper dignity on the part of the tribunal, and beneath all the smoke and clamor there was plainly to be felt the steady undercurrent of a serious purpose. Direct observation of French judicial pro ceedings is calculated to impress one that Imuch of the criticism upon them is superficial and unwarranted. In general there is little ground for the impression that the rights of the accused in criminal prosecutions are dis regarded. In many particulars the prisoner is allowed a latitude unknown to the English or American courts. The French tribunals have a way of threshing out things as they go along, which may strike a foreign lawyer as disorderly and confusing, but clearly does the accused no harm. They are not entirely alone in this. The writer once saw the Lord Chief Justice of England stop a trial, in media.1! res, to take the opinion of the jury upon a single question in the case. The jury, under his direction, put their heads together and returned a finding upon it, his Lordship taking snuff with much satisfaction in the interval, after which the trial proceeded with that question settled. If the defendant has no opportunity for hours, or perhaps for days, to contradict or explain a damaging statement by a government witness, the im pression mav become so fixed in the minds of
the jury as to be practically indelible. In France, the prisoner may contradict or ex plain upon the spot; so that the charge and the answer go to the jury together. The practice is not wholly objectionable. If it results, as sometimes it does, in interrup tion, altercation, and a sort of free fight, in which judges, counsel and parties are all try ing to be heard at once, it must be remem bered that much of this is due to the natural vivacity of the French temperament and manner; that Frenchmen are not always ex cited when they appear to be; and that the material question is not of Mie effect ot such proceedings upon our minds, but upon theirs. The French practice of interrogating the accused, if fairly conducted, has much to recommend it. Of all means of developing the truth of a criminal case it is the most effective. There is usually no reason why an innocent person should fear to account for himself or explain his conduct. Probably the privilege is sometimes abused. No rule of man's making is or can be executed with absolutely exact justice. Yet between this practice on one hand, and on the other our rule of immunity from disclosure, o'ten administered with a superstitious deference which sacrifices the rights of the public to the protection of the accused, there is much reason to believe that the interests of justice lie with the former. The present, however, is not an opportune time to suggest any modification of such constitutional restraints as remain to us. The speeches to the jury which concluded the Humbert trial, by M. Blondel, the Advo cate-General, and Mre. Labori, who had the close, were of a high order; moderate in statement, forcible in reasoning, free from any straining after rhetorical effect, but marked by a dignity of tone and symmetry of style now rarely known to our courts. The accused were charged with three offences; forgery, availing of forgery, and swindling.
