A series of judicial scandals has served to draw attention, not by any means for the first time, to the dangerous power over individual' liberty wielded by the juges instruction. These magistrates have fall power to arrest any suspected person and keep him in confinement for an unlimited period, without allowing him to communicate with anyone. In France, no one can safely say: "My conscience is clear, and I have nothing to fear; I am certain that I shall sleep in my bed tonight and that my domicile will not be violated." Unfortunately there are only too many instances which prove that innocence and virtue are' very poor guarantees of safety, justice, in France at any rate, being anything but infallible It would be going too far to say that all juy instruction make an excessive use of the powers entrusted to them, but some of them are undoubtedly inspired by the spirit which animated their predecessors of the middle ages. To these magistrates every prisoner is guilty, and if the evidence is insufficient, they endeavour to force him to confess. They can no longer inflict physical tortures, but they can keep an innocent man in solitary confinement until his health and reason are seriously endangered, his business ruined and lis it destroyed, and then deny him the opportunity of retrieving his character by a public trial. Such a state of thioys, existing at the end of the nineteenth century, constitutes an almost incredible anomaly, but there can be no doubt of its reality. A few weeks ago we had the case of a inge W'instruction who assaulted witnesses because their testimony was, to his mind, unsatisfactory. An unfortunate prisoner was detained for four months without examination, the magistrate having com. pletely forgotten his existence. An innocent man arrested and imprisoned on the strength of a report supplied to the police by an enemy, committed suicide in his cell. But by far the most scandalous revelations were those made at the Seine Assizes last Friday during the trial of a man named Pelissier for murder. This man and his mistress were arrested more than four months ago and kept in solitary confinement. The woman stated in her evidence at the Assizes that she was visited nearly every day by. the inge d'instruction who tried all kinds of ruses to get her to incriminate her lover. She swore that she was offered 150 franes, immediate liberation and a good situation if she would denounce Pelissier. She was told that it was useless to keep silence, as he had confessed evesything. In spite of all temptations she remained firm and was treated with increased severity, but all to no purpose. In the meantime, ling to counsel for the defence, Pelissier was subjected to. the same kind of intimidation, and was told that things would be made easy for him if ho would swear that his mistress helped him to commit the crime. These.assertions created a great sensation in Court and led the prosecuting counsel to throw up his brief, whereupon the accused was immediately discharged. The Minister of Justice has ordered an enquiry into the affair.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.