MEDIAEVAL JUSTICE.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 18 January 1929, Page 6

MEDIAEVAL JUSTICE.

OUTBURST OF INDIGNATION IN THE PARIS PRESS.

<'iies ,ii' indignation, whistling, ;utd hooting grated the verdict of the jury at Toulouse Assizes on Saturday, October 27, :UI2B, in the case of" Count. Pierre de Rayssac. a member of one of the oldest and noblest families of Langucdoe. who was accused of the murder of his illegitimate child, a baby boy of nearly two years old. The facts were uncontested. The motives for the crime were family pride, lest the escutcheon should be stained, and family avarice, lest a few shillings a month should have to be spent on the upkeep of this unwanted infaut. The jury found lack of premeditation where premeditation was proved throughout: and extenuating circumstances where there were none. Before such a verdict the Judge could inflict no harder penaity than ten years' penal servitude. The reluctance of French juries to invoke the. guillotine is a familiar thing in these days, but it was not expected that a jury would go as far as it could towards acquitting .a'guilty man -whom universal morality would regard as a monster. The whole of the French press is naturally shocked at this new and extraordinary failure of the jury system.

The story is the usual sordid one, but ending' in this instance in the atrocity of an ignorant servant girl seduced by the master and "thrown into the street when her condition was known. A few pounds were sent her at the beginning to shut her mouth, but for nearly two years the young mother had t'o fend for herself with the baby in her arms. How good a mqtherVshe proved herself is shown by the splendid physical state and beauty of the little boy. At length, finding herself penniless and unable to get Tegular work, she wrote to ask for a little help. A family council of the De Rayssacs was held, and it was decided that an end must be put to this scandal. Dc Rayssac motored to Carcassonne and met the girl, who had hoped that tho.. sight of the child would move him. S'o far from that, he, a rich man, declared he could not be burdened with the brat and that ho and his family were not. prepared to contribute 15s a month for maybe ten years, maybe more. He ordered her to go at once and hand it over to the Poor Law authorities. She tried, but the Poor Law would not take it. "Try the private orphanages," he ordered; but again the- doors would not open.

Night was now falling. "I know where to put it," he said. He took the boy from the arms of the weeping girl, and went olf with it in his car. On the road'he undressed the child completely, and hid its garments in the fields, so that there should be no means of identification. He then wrapped the sleeping infant in a warm rug, and proceeded several miles to the canal bridge. There he dismounted with the little bundle, and emptied the child from the rug into the icy water. It was almost by chance that a Poor Law official identified in the corpse picked out from the canal the child that had been offered a few daya before. Arrest followed swiftly. The verdict of the jury is a unconscious 'tribute to the power of rhetoric, as great in France, especially South Prance, as it was in Rome in the days of Cicera. The De Rayssac family was rich enough" to secure the services of that glory of the Paris Bar, Maitre de Moio Giaffeii. His speech for the defence wa-s a masterpiece of distorted sentimentality. He pleaded with the jury to turn their thoughts from the dead to the living, to think with pity of the illegitimate child that was dead, but to think with even more active pity of the legitimate baby that was living —for Dc Rayssac has since married and has an heir—and what the stain of a condemnation would mean to it all its life; to think of the noble record during generations of the De Rayssac family and its good works towards the "Gentlemen of the jury, I appeal to your pity on behalf of the De Rayssac family, in the name of the good that its living members have always done and in the name of the blood that its dead have shed for France." It was «. peasantry; to think "of 'Pierre- de Rayssac's own brother, killed gloriousa magnificent, peroration he'concluded: ly in battle during the Great War. In franc damages she had asked for in order to be entitled to representation at the trial.