LAW AND LAWYERS IN FRANCE.*
ENGLISHMEN who are disposed to grumble at the slow couree of justice at home—at the long delays of the law or its in- effectual effort to grapple with crime—should read Mn. Moriarty's book, and take at least some consolation from the thought that justice is not one of those things that are better done in France. Cumbrous and antiquated as our legal machinery may be, we would not exchange it for that described under the title of Le Palais de Justice de Paris, notwithstand- ing the fact that the authors of that work have written in a spirit which is rather eulogistic than otherwise. This book, which was written in collaboration by certain members of the Association of Journalists attached to the Paris Law Courts • The Periii Law Cowls. Translated from the French by Gerald Moriarty,. London; Boeley and Co. and has been translated into English by Mr. Moriarty, gives a very vivid description of the working of the French judicial system from the outsiders' point of view; but although the law- reporters have tempered their occasionally hostile criticism with much enthusiastic admiration, it cannot be said that the picture that they draw of French law and French lawyers is altogether a flattering one. But then the fundamental differ- ences which exist between French and English law are much more than differencee of procedure. The idea of justice in the two countries is not quite the same, and nothing brings out this fact more clearly than the occasional comments of the English press upon the results of causes cenbres in France,— results which presumably give fall satisfaction to the French public, but which, to our insular minds, seem little short of miscarriages of justice. For this reason, criticism of the work before us is rendered somewhat difficult, It is almost impossible to refrain from comparing the French with the English procedure, and yet all such comparison is obviously beside the mark.
One thing is clear ; there is the same feeling of discontent in France with regard to the delay and the cost of lawsuits as there is in England. " If you will go to law," say our authors, "see that you have time, money, and resignation." "There is hardly a law-suit at Paris, even among those classed as summary proceedings, which does not last a year. For ordinary cases a much longer space of time must be allowed.
In the first chamber of the tribunal, one must no longer count by years but by lustres." This sounds almost as bad as the state of things in the unregenerate days of the Court of Chancery, when such cases as " Jardyce v. Ja,rdyce " were possible. On the other hand, compared to English costs, the heavy expense of French law is not so apparent. "It is reckoned that a summary proceeding costs from 100 to 200 francs. A divorce with judgment by default rarely runs to less than 500 francs. If the action is defended, the costs may be reckoned at 1,000 or 1,500 francs It is im- possible to escape from an ordinary civil action for less than 300 francs." According to our ideas this can hardly be called excessive. Where the hardship is most felt is in cases where the suitor is a poor man ; for there is no proportion be- tween the costs and the interests involved, and the workman who sues an omnibus company for damages for being run over is put to the same expense as a great capitalist who brings an action for the recovery of millions. If the payment of the Bench and the Bar bear any relation to the costs of law, justice should certainly be cheaper, on the whole, in France than in England. The President of the Court of Caseation, the head of the French judiciary, receives just 21,200 a year, and the First President of the Court of Appeal, copal. And if our Judges receive more than six times as much as the French, the unofficial members of the Bar are even better paid; for a successful barrister makes in the course of a year almost as many pounds as a French advocate does francs. At least, we may console ourselves for this extra expense with the thought that the dignity of the French law falls very far short of the majesty of the English. It possesses nothing to compare in solemn splendour with a Lord Chief Justice whose personal and traditional prestige is as far removed from that of his French colleague, as is the dignity of his wig from the jauntiness of the cook's cap which graces the head of the first Judge in France. It is that lack of dignity which strikes the English reader of this book as the prevailing characteristic of the French Court of Justice, He cannot help comparing the solemn, inexorable demeanour of the English Bench with the eager vivacity of the French Judge. Here is, for example, a description of the great Pro- cuireur-General, M. Quesnay de Beaurepaire, one of the most famous judiciaries in France :— " An actor of incomparable skill, a speaker and thinker of un- questionable power, a remarkable man, in fact, stands before you. -Under his searching and crushing analysis, the prisoner has no secrets. The Proeurew.Gdndral attacks him in front directly, describing him with a gesture, piercing his very soul with a glance, weaving round him a not of suggestive phrases, while ever and anon he makes him start by some sudden and unex- pected apostrophe. I know your name,' said M. Quesnay de Beaurepaire to the mysterious Campi ; 'I am going to tell it you!' And he seemed as if about to fall upon him, his finger stretched out as if pointing at the corpse. The prisoner waited all trembling while his adversary lengthened out his words and prolonged his silence until the culprit began to think his secret known and his real name on the point of being east in his teeth. Then with a disdainful smile, satisfied with the effect produced, M. de Beau-
repairs finished his sentence in a tone of contemptuous irony : 'I know your name, and I am going to tell it you; you are the murderer of the Rue du Regard.'"
And what then ? It is difficult to see how justiee can be advanced by this histrionic display on the Bench, or how an incomparable actor, so skilled in playing to the gallery, should be best fitted to elicit the truth and weigh impartially the evidence that bears on the life or death of an accused mur- derer, To turn from the Judge to the advocate, we are again impressed with the idea that the primary object of the French Court is not so much to dispense justice as to afford an interesting spectacle to the public. The most brilliant advo- cate of the French Bar, Maitre Allou, is thus amusingly described :—" On great occasions, when it was his task to restore the credit of some institution which had been the sub- ject of calumny, like the Bank, his talent took a higher flight, his style became more flowing, his action more pathetic, his emotion more contagious, till, overcome in his turn by the nervous excitement he raised about him, his eyes streamed with tears, and he fell back half fainting in his seat." Imagine Sir Charles Russell defending the Bank of England after this fashion ! Of another famous advocate we read :—" He is an enchanter; he has grace, fervour, constant sincerity, and a real emotion which no one, not even he himself, can resist ; he is the tenor, the poet, a tenor in the Italian style, and a poet after Alfred de Musset. He will sing of the attractions of love, of the woes of the forsaken mistress, of the soothing influences of religion, and the sublime madness of patriotism." How terribly these accomplishments would be wasted on a barrister who wished to persuade an English jury !
If the Parisian has reason to object to the slowness of a civil suit, he cannot, at any rate, complain of the rapidity with which ordinary police cases are conducted. In Paris there is only one Police Court for the twenty arrondissements, in which every Justice of Peace sits in turn for one week in order to try cases of infraction of police regulations. The Court sits two hundred and forty days in the year for an average time of two hours, and in that space disposes of a little short of fifty thousand cases,—something less than a minute to each case ; but then the delinquents are actually tried and sentenced in batches according to the police regulation which has been infringed. If not quite so speedy, the procedure of the Correctional Court is also marked by a haste which can hardly make its awards very satisfactory. There is no place in Paris for those good people who in London look upon a Magistrate as a general friend and adviser, and take up the time of the police court with the recital of their domestic grievances. One of the most interesting chapters in the book is devoted to a description of the Court of Assise, and especially to the composition and characteristics of French juries. It is perhaps in the different conduct of French and English jury- men that the difference of race is most clearly displayed.
Taken altogether, this work of the Society of Journalists attached to the Paris Law Courts was well worth translating, though it is difficult to bestow very high praise upon Mr.
Moriarty's translation. No doubt he has been wise in retaining French technical terms wherever the English equivalent was wanting ; but nothing obliged him to retain French idioms by their literal translation,—a proceeding which sometimes makes his own English so clumsy as to be almost unintelligible. The book is fully illustrated by sketches which, though often very clever, are curiously uneven in merit. It is difficult to say whether the portraits of the advocates or the criminals of the Correctional Court are the least prepossessing.
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