THE MORIN AFFAIR.
THERE was nothing atrocious, or even surprising, about the murder of Morin, which jest now so interests the Parisian public. It was a murder of vengeance, committed with the pistol, for reasons which in every country piodtice in every decade a certain number of revengeful murders. Madame Clovis Rogues, a lady of blameless character, though of ex- treme opinions, an artist, and of the Provençal temperament, was falsely accused by Morin, the agent of a Private Inquiry Office, of immoral life before marriage. Sure of herself and her character, Madame Hugues prosecuted the traducer, whose motive appears to have been gain, either for himself or his employers, and he was sentenced to two years' imprison- ment. By French law he was entitled to an appeal and to liberty while appealing ; and irritated by Madame Hugues's staunchness, he used his liberty to give vent to his malignity against his prosecutor. He pursued her and her husband with post-cards containing reiterations of his insults, and in- tended to be read by her servants, her friends, and even the ushers of the Chamber, where they were often sent directed to her husband. Wearied and, so to speak, maddened by these attacks, which had lasted months, and which were killing her husband with rage and excitement, Madame Hugues took a revolver, waited for her traducer on the steps of a Court, and, without warning or threat, shot him where he stood, the shots
inflicting wounds in the head which, after ten days of agony, proved mortal. So far there is nothing in the affair to dis- tinguish it from ordinary assassinations of the kind, except the high character of the criminal, and the extreme nature of the provocation she had received. Such murders in humbler life are as frequent as any except murders for greed, and are always defended in the same way,—by the argument that the assassin found life intolerable under her wrongs, and had avenged herself. There is not a Court in Europe which has not dealt with cases similar in all but details, or the extent of the vengeance inflicted.
There would be no reason even for comment on the case, but for the extraordinary and, to us, we confess, alarming outburst of opinion in Paris which has followed the occurrence. It is stated that Madame Clovis Hugues is certain of acquittal by any Jury; that she was informally tried by a " Cercle," com- prising retired officials, judges, and persons of a similar class, and unanimously acquitted ; and that the " advanced" women of France intend to present her with a crown. The journalists of Paris, for the most part, though there are exceptions, openly and strenuously defend her ; and M. de Cassagnac, who has fought for rigorous government all his life, and who detests Madame Hugues's political principles, holds her conduct up as a model for future imitation. One must kill occasionally, he says, to be happy, and keep one's head up. Nothing, as it seems to us, can show a more dangerous or general relaxation of moral fortitude in French society. That Parisians should deeply pity Madame Clovis Hugues as a woman driven by continuous insult and attack out of her mind is natural enough, as it is also natural that they should have little pity to spare for the tortures of her victim. He was a reptile, certainly ; and though they are not so indignant when a " Society" journalist does precisely the same thing, but hold him absolved if he only accepts a consequent challenge—that is, risks being- a murderer or suicide in expiation—we can understand and partly sympa- thise with their callousness about Morin. That Madame Hugues was a deeply-wronged woman and Morin a pest deserving the galleys, may be allowed from the beginning. But that Parisians should not see that their roar of ap- plause is fatal to any civilisation based on their own prin- ciples, is, we confess, to us an alarming surprise. We do not expect to find them objecting to such killing on moral or Christian grounds, for they have ceased to regard Christianity as their code ; nor do we look for humanitarian feeling in them, for they display that only at intervals, and with regard only to selected specimens of living creatures. They detest the punish- ment of death, unless the dead is a Tonquinese; abhor cruelty to animals, except in the interest of science ; and abominate persecution, unless its victim is a monk, a nun, or a priest. But we do expect to see them uphold civilisation on a utili- tarian basis, and civilisation must perish if private war is upheld ; and if the declaration of such war is committed to persons who, ex hypothesi, are of all mankind the least qualified to exercise the right. Let us entirely admit the greatness of the wrong Madame Clovis Hugues was called upon to endure—a subject upon which we should go some way in agreement with them—and that only makes their position the more indefensible. Because Madame Hugues was so wronged that human nature could hardly be expected to bear it, that revenge became almost a natural passion, and that neither judgment nor impartiality were to be expected under such suffering, therefore she was the right person to combine in herself the functions of prosecutor, judge, jury, and execu- tioner. Because she tried her own enemy, condemned him unheard, and by killing him prevented the possibility of appeal, therefore she is to be regarded as a heroine, and not only honoured, like a second Charlotte Corday, but exempted, as that noble fanatic was not, from all punish- ment. We will say nothing of the instinctive horror of killing, such as now makes Madame Hugues repent her act, for a reference to conscience in Paris only rouses opposition. Suppose for one moment that Madame Hugues had possessed, by virtue of one of the old personal jurisdictions, the legal right to inflict on Morin a fitting penalty for his offence—say, seven years' penal servitude—and exercised it in secret without hearing the accused, without calling witnesses, without any proof, except her own belief—for there is still a suspicion that the cards came from an employer, and not from Morin—and in what terms would Paris have condemned that exercise of legal power P Yet, because it is illegal, and stretched immeasurably, and so exercised as to be beyond even the effect of repentant mercy in the Judge, therefore its exercise is to be quoted as a new development of justice ! if Madame Hugues is right, why is it wrong in a King whose life has been threatened to order his assassin's execution there and then F Or why is it wicked in a father whose son has been murdered to shoot the prisoner in the dock ? Or to bring it more closely home to Paris, why is it criminal iu an insulted journalist who has accepted a challenge to draw his adversary's bullet from his pistol, but retain and use his own ? That would be treachery, you say; but treachery to what ? To the social law, as observed iu Paris ; but every killing from behind a hedge, and this particular killing was just as unexpected, is also a treachery to the social law of the whole world, Paris included. The journalists may say that Madame lingoes had no redress ; but it is not true, for the first wrong had been redressed by law, and the second might have been, if only evidence were procurable, and, under the French system, with its " right of prevention " and authorised espionage, evidence would soon have been forthcoming. If a Pagan society, organised to secure happiness before all things, and preferring utility to right and wrong, has nut, when an injured woman is in question, the fortitude to stand by its own laws, and see them carried out—of course, with every legal allowance for intolerable provocation — what is to be the cement of that society ? There is nothing left but indi- vidual will and " an irregular code of honour," which would equally compel an acquittal if Madame Hugues had shot an innocent man, believing him, in the confusion, to have been Morin. It seems to us that the Parisians, in passing such a judgment, are giving up not only the Christian law but all law, and are resolving society into its elements, amidst which the man who shoots straightest and oftenest, and with least warning, will be speedily at the top. They are not only killing morals, of which they are careless, but civilisation, which they wish to preserve.
The incident recalls to legislators a very curious and per- plexing hiatus in modern law,—the absence of any direct and easily applied punishment for deliberate insult. We punish the smallest blow, and in one way or other the most insignificant libel, but do not punish insult as such, though it may inflict a much more severe, as well as bitterly felt, wrong. We do not even allow a complainant to plead insult as a reason why his opponent should be held in recoamisances, lest, if the insult were persisted in, the complainant should take the law into his own hands. That seems illogical, and indeed, is so ; and we rather wonder that, in countries where personal honour is so highly regarded that duelling is esteemed its necessary safeguard, no serious effort should ever have been made to fill up the gap. We suppose the practical difficulties have been found too many, and the sub-civilisations existing in one State too diversified and even contrary to each other, to be reduced to an equal rule. A law of insult, which made life happier for the refined, would make it unendurable for the rough, and would, in a majority of cases, be too hopelessly unjust to enforce. We could not imprison the graduate, and let the bargee go -free. Laws are not made for the sensitive, but for average persons ; nor could we introduce into Europe, without reviving privilege, distinctions of personal law. Such a thing exists in at least one of the laws which protect the Sovereign, but the extension of the principle would be impossible. Nevertheless, there is a weak place there in the armour of modern society, the depth and breadth of which is occasionally revealed in a tragedy like the Morin affair, and which, when the populations become a little more civilised and sensitive, will have to be mended up.
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