advance during the last fifty years. The recent case of Mme. Steinheil appears, however, to have drawn public attention in France strongly to the question and the need for a better system.

We may, however, give just one or two examples of scenes from recent Continental trials, taken from reports which appeared in English newspapers. The first is from the trial of Mrs. Gould in September 1907, at Monte Carlo, where the procedure is substantially French :—

"I warn you,' began the judge, fixing her keenly with blue eyes, and speaking in severe tones, 'I have had enough of comedy. I will stand no further display of acting, no pretence of fainting. If you begin that game again, I will keep you here till midnight.'

"Mrs. Gould's massive lips twisted like a snarling dog's, but she repressed her rage and made a bid for sympathy. 'Are you not yet tired of torturing a poor helpless woman?' she said. 'Have you no pity for me.'

"No,' thundered the judge, 'none. Did you have pity on Mme. Levin when you plunged the dagger into her breast? Did you have pity on her as you dismembered her corpse? Did you have pity on her when you insulted her memory? I have the same pity for I have the same pity for you that you had

for Mme. Levin.""

The other little scene is from the trial of the Countess Tarnovska at Venice, in March, 1910:—

"On the resumption of the Kamarovsky murder trial here this morning, the President continued his merciless examination of the Countess Tarnovska.

"But what about Naumoff?' persisted the judge relentlessly. The Countess lowered her head and was silent. 'Let me read you some of his letters,' continued her inquisitor."

Merciless," "relentlessly," and "inquisitor," are words that could find no place in a report of an English criminal trial. A Continental criminal trial consists of a series of

such dramatic incidents; an English criminal trial consists of one long, dull and dignified but careful investigation of facts.

The trial of the Cammorists now going on at Viterbo reads to us more like a long drawn out comic-melodrama than anything else.

The following description, from the graphic pen of Mr. G. W. Stevens, speaks for itself:—

"Here is an example of French methods of evidence. The officer who was with Dreyfus on the day of his degradation, Captain Lebrun-Renault, has asserted that the condemned man made a confession. A confession, of course, is evidence everywhere, but everybody knows that false confessions of crime are not rare; therefore, in English law even a confession requires confirmation. In this case the confession is disputed.

"It is not pretended that anybody else now alive heard Dreyfus. Yet almost every witness up to now had discussed this alleged confession. First the President questioned Dreyfus himself on it. Dreyfus denied it. Next, M. CasimirPerier deposed that Captain Lebrun-Renault had said nothing about the matter to him. Next, General Mercier deposed that he told Captain Lebrun-Renault to tell M. Casimir-Perier about it. Next, these two witnesses were heard in contradiction. The ex-Minister of War said that General Gonse heard him tell the captain to tell the President; the ex-President said that M. Dupuy had told him that Captain Lebrun-Renault did not tell him, Dupuy, that he told him, Casimir-Perier. M. Cavaignac went into the same incident at great length. He said that General Gonse wrote to him that Captain Lebrun-Renault told him, Gonse, that he, Lebrun-Renault, heard Dreyfus confess. This jungle of pronouns is what the French seem to call evidence. And when you have struggled through it you hear that Captain Lebrun-Renault is to be called himself to give his

own evidence in Dreyfus's presence! What a trial!" (The Tragedy of Dreyfus, p. 94.)

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However, Lebrun-Renault's statement was not all. He said that there was also in the room at the time a Captain d'Attel, who is now dead. So next, in the French manner, we had a captain to swear that d'Attel told him he heard Dreyfus confess, and then a lieutenant-colonel to swear that Lebrun-Renault told him he had heard Dreyfus confess, and then a major to swear that the captain had told him that d'Attel had told him that Dreyfus had confessed, and then a first-class controller to swear that the lieutenant-colonel had told him that Dreyfus had confessed." (Ib., pp. 231-2.)

No wonder if the writer, who had heard this "evidence" given merely as a spectator, fully expected to be called as a witness himself.

"I was waiting to hear myself called on to swear that I had heard the controller tell the Court that the lieutenantcolonel told him Lebrun-Renault told him Dreyfus had told him he delivered documents—when I heard General Gonse admitting that when challenged by Dreyfus he said nothing about the alleged confession." ́(Ib., 232.)

“What would an English judge say to such a confession? "You do not need me to tell you. The English judge would refuse to hear another word of it. But the French, in perfect good faith, look at confessions in quite a different way. Our justice aims at proving a man did a thing; that of France at inducing him to say he did it. The whole duty of a juge d'instruction-all the browbeating which is volleyed from the bench at a French prisoner, and which seems to us so contrary to the spirit of justice—is founded on the theory that the best, even the only satisfactory, proof of guilt is the confession of the accused. 'Has he confessed?' is the Frenchman's first question when he hears a man is arrested. And, having been brought up in the belief that confession is the first duty of a criminal, he usually has.” (Ib., p. 228.)

The effect of such evidence, as Mr. Stevens points out, is utterly confusing and nugatory. "Listening hour by hour, day by day, to testimony such as this finished by quite numbing the judgment." Add to this that the witnesses for the prosecution and witnesses for the defence are not called in due order, but are all called indiscriminately, “in alternate layers of for and against," sandwiched in between so to say—indeed the terms witnesses for the prosecution or for the defence can hardly be applied to them with propriety they are all witnesses, and it is for the jury to estimate the effect of their evidence; and that they give their evidence as they think fit, in narrative form, without check, and not in answer to questions, and it will be seen how vastly the French method of procedure differs from ours. "Every French witness," says Mr. Stevens, "thinks it grossly unfair if he is not allowed to say anything he likes about anything." Further, all cross-examination must be conducted through the presiding judge. The result is, from our point of view, a "hopeless maze of discrepancy and contradiction, which makes you despair of human certitude and human veracity."

A criminal trial is one of the things they do not "manage better in France."

The English Law of Evidence as applied to Criminal Matters.

It would be out of place, even if it were possible, to attempt to give here anything like a complete account of the English Law of Evidence; but there are a few rules which relate specially to the administration of the Criminal law and which demand a passing notice.

Although the Law of Evidence appears very bulky in our law books, it really depends upon the application of comparatively few principles. Its bulk is due to the fact that it is implicated with Case law and pleading, and is

so treated by most text-book writers. It is derived from two sources :

(1) A very large number of cases, most of which have been decided within the last 250 years: and

(2) A comparatively small number of Acts of Parliament, most of which have been passed within the last 50 or 60 years.

From this it will be seen that the Law of Evidence is almost entirely the result or product of judge-made law, and indeed it was only about sixty years ago that the Legislature began to regulate it by Act of Parliament. It is therefore of comparatively modern origin, and few, if any of its rules date back before the Commonwealth. It shares with the

Law of Contract the credit of being our most modern and typically English branch of law. It forms part and parcel of the jury system from which it cannot be separated. Also it owes much to the science of logic. Chief Baron Gilbert's treatise on Evidence, the first separate work on the subject, was based on Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, as Mr. Justice Stephen's Digest of the Law of Evidence was based on J. S. Mill's Logic. Hence the importance of the study of logic to a law student.

In his General View of the Criminal Law (p. 69), Mr. Justice Stephen declared that the rules as to the competency of evidence in criminal cases might "be reduced to a few leading maxims, the most important of which are:"(1) Evidence must be confined to the point at issue : “(2) The best evidence must be given, or its absence explained:

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(3) Hearsay is not competent evidence:

(4) No one is obliged to criminate himself.”

Each of these maxims requires some explanation or limitation.

The first opens up the whole question of relevancy.