révoltés de la position cruelle dans laquelle se trouve placé un témoin timide, par la licence des avocats à cet égard.”

If the president refuse to put a legitimate question, this vitiates the proceedings. After the witness has been heard, the witness is asked, if the accused is the person to whom his evidence applies, and the president asks the accused if he wishes to reply to what has been said.

EXCLUSION OF WITNESSES IN CRIMINAL TRIALS (y).

The Ordonnance of 1667, excluded relations to the eighth degree inclusively.

The Ordonnance of 1670 was silent on the matter.

The Code (322) (z) allows the accused the procureur général to object to the admission of certain persons as witnesses, and if objected to they cannot be sworn.

But the 269th article of the Code enables the president to summon and hear any person who can elucidate the facts in dispute, whether they are comprised in article 322 or not.

(y) "Pourront être reproches, les parens ou alliés de l'une ou de l'autre des parties jusqu'au degré de cousin issu de germain inclusivement; les parens et alliés des conjoints au degré ci-dessus, si le conjoint est vivant, ou si la partie ou le témoin en a des enfans vivans: en cas que le conjoint soit décédé, et qu'il n'ait pas laissé de descendans, pourront être reproches les parens et alliés en ligne directe, les frères, beaux-frères, sœurs, et belles-sœurs.

"Pourront aussi être reproches, le témoin héritier présomptif ou donataire; celui qui aura bu ou mangé avec la partie, et à ses frais, depuis la prononciation du jugement qui a ordonné l'enquête; celui qui aura donné des certificats sur les faits relatifs au procès; les serviteurs et domestiques; le témoin en état d'accusation; celui qui aura été condamné à une peine afflictive ou infamante, ou même à une peine correctionelle pour cause de vol."

"284. Le témoin reproche sera entendu dans sa déposition."

(z) "322. Ne pourront être reçues les dépositions,

"1. Du père de la mère, de l'aïeul, de l'aïeule, ou de tout autre ascendant de l'accusé ou de l'un des accusés présens et soumis au même débat."

These witnesses are not sworn.

But for this article, the

father who murdered one of his children in the presence of the mother might escape unpunished.

The law requiring the evidence of two witnesses for a conviction exists no longer. The maxim "testis unus testis nullus" had led to the torture, and to a maxim still more barbarous, that the evidence of two irreproachable witnesses who agreed in their statements ensured condemnation.

But this abuse was put an end to by the assemblée constituante, 1791, which laid down the principle of the "conviction intime," as that on which a jury was to act. This is almost literally transcribed in the Code, article 342, which substitutes moral appreciation for a technical standard, always fallacious, and often false; after the witness has given his evidence, the deposition he originally made may be read. (Cod. Inst. Crim. 317).

TORTURE (a).

It may, perhaps, be thought, that a history of the law of evidence ought to comprise some details concerning torture, a manner of obtaining evidence, which continued till the close of the last century to be the blot and scandal of continental

"2. Du fils, fille, petit-fils, petite-fille, ou de tout autre descendant." "3. Des frères et sœurs."

4. Des alliés aux mêmes degrés."

“5. Du mari ou de la femme, même après le divorce prononcé."

"6. Des dénonciateurs dont la dénonciation est récompensée pécuniairement par la loi."

"Sans néanmoins que l'audition des personnes ci-dessus désignées puisse opérer une nullité, lorsque, soit le procureur-général, soit la partie civile, soit les accusés, ne se sont pas opposés à ce qu'elles soient entendues. (1 Cr. 77, 82, 156, 408, 510 s.; P. 28, 42, 43, 378)."

(a) Poullain du Parc, 1. 6, c. 23, vol. 12, p. 585, § 27. "Il y a une entière différence, entre l'interrogatoire de la question préparatoire, et celui de la question préalable ordonnée par le jugement de mort. Celleci n'a pour objet que la découverte des complices; et l'on n'a pas besoin de l'aveu du condamné, puisque son sort est décidé."

jurisprudence. Happily this is a subject which has ceased to be of any practical importance in civilized Europe.

The history (a) of this ecclesiastical addition to modern jurisprudence, (for such it was, that being the manner in which the mild doctrines of Christianity were exemplified by the church from the dark ages, down to a very recent period), ceased in France on the 1st of June, 1788, when the question préalable was abolished. This was the torture inflicted on a criminal condemned to death, in order to extort the names of his accomplices. Jousse (1770) defended it, on the ground that it was très utile, and that society could take no interest “a l'égard d'un corps confisqué et qui va être exécuté." The other torture, still more shocking to justice, was the " question préparatoire," and was inflicted after a certain amount of evidence had been obtained, in order to extort the confession of the accused. This was abolished in the year 1780, (August 24). Another division of torture, was, into the ordinaire and extraordinaire. Here, again, we may trace the beneficial effect of the great French writers (b) of the eighteenth century. Whatever may be practised in Austrian prisons, in the Piombi of Venice, or the caverns of Spielberg, where the flower of Italy has for centuries been doomed to perish, under the wholesome restraint of a paternal and protecting government, the use of torture is not avowed, now, even by the most brutal and stupid of all civilized despotisms, for Russia, inhabited

(a) I translate the words of a very learned writer: "Diese Kirchliche erfindung." Warnkönig und Stein, vol. 3, p. 689.

(b) Voltaire, Dict. Phil. Torture. Long before this Montaigne raised the voice of philosophy against this infernal cruelty. Essais, 1.2, c. 5. "C'est une dangereuse invention que celle des gehennes et semble que ce soit plutôt un essai de patience que de vérité," &c. So did Grotius, Ep. 693, Ed. Amsterdam; Charron, 1. 1, c. 4, No. 7; Mémoires de Tavannes, p. 223; Toureil, Essais de Jurisprudence, qu. 9; and La Bruyère, de quelques usages. Every body has read Beccaria. "Tant d'habiles gens et tant de beaux

parler après eux.

génies ont écrit contre cette pratique, que je n'ose J'allais dire . . . . . . mais j'entends la voix de la nature

qui crie contre moi." Montesquieu, 1. 6, c. 17.

by a horde of corrupt and licentious slaves, belongs to the category of barbarous nations. Unless, therefore, the use of torture in the Papal States is revived under the tyranny of priests, by restoring which a republican government has earned the scorn and execration of the most remote posterity, all questions connected with a practice so degrading to human nature may be considered as obsolete. Whatever may be the case if Europe continues to retrace the path of improvement, as swiftly as she has done for the last year, it is not yet necessary to argue against the use of torture, as an instrument of discovering truth, sanctioned as it is by the practice of past ages and the full authority of the church. Those of our judges (c) who consider the wisdom (which means in matters of jurisprudence the ignorance) of our ancestors with most respect, are, fortunately for us, satisfied, as indeed they may be, with special pleading and the Court of Chancery. Some remarks that are immediately connected with the subject will find their place in the succeeding chapter.

(c) Poullain du Parc, vol. 12, loc. sup. cit., says, que la question préalable."

"Rien n'est plus juste

CHAPTER IV.

LAW OF EVIDENCE IN ENGLAND, TO THE ACCESSION OF THE

STUARTS.

SLOWLY, indeed, and with great difficulty have the principles on which English trial by jury now rests, as to the examination of witnesses, established themselves among us. Whatever the bigotry, and servility, and utter want of principle of lawyers on and off the Bench,-whatever the opposition of the servants of the Crown,—whatever the long apathy and childish veneration of the people could do, was done to prevent and arrest their progress; and if wiser and more humane principles have at last prevailed, we owe it not to the wisdom of our legislators, still less to the humanity of our judges, but to the fortunate and singular accidents, that obliged the English aristocracy to court the English people, and enlisting religious ardour on the side of civil freedom, gave to the maxims of truth and justice, an impulse without which their triumph would have been impossible; even as it is, that triumph in civil cases is far from complete, and in criminal cases was delayed to a period much later than is commonly supposed.

By far the majority of those lawyers who rose to eminence among us, from the days of the Plantagenets to those of Lord Eldon, have owed their elevation to servility, narrowness of mind, and ignorance, of all that statesmen and jurists ought to know. Rich, who told the Cambyses of English history, the destroyer of Sir Thomas More, while he was dripping with the blood of the wives whom he had employed his Parliaments to murder, that he resembled Samson in strength, Absalom in beauty, and Solomon in wisdom, was but the too faithful prototype of a series