In France

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIV, Issue 25, 21 June 1906, Page 18

In France

In Ireland the scales of justice are too often tilted by tho» Castle ' Removable ' and by the packed jury. In Trance, they ' get there ' by another route. Here is how it is in part described by the special correspondent of the ' Catholic Times,' in th 3 course of his account of the fate that befell the ' manifestants ' against the church-inventories : ' Certain Public Prosecutors have given orders to their subordinates to appeal where small punishments or the benefit of the First Offenders Act. have been given to the Catholic manifestants, and so, by deferring to the last, the deposit of the completed statement of the case with tho Court of Appeal, to keep them in prison as long as possible. Thus, some condemned only to a small fine, have already lain more than, a month in prison. Usually the courts accord provisional liberty, without difficulty, to many classes of grievous offenders. From time to time the Public Prosecutors in circulars remind those concerned, that of persons awaiting trial, only si'ch as ha\c no fixed abode and would probably take flight should be kept in prison. But the manifestants against the inventory at Montregard are still in prison, notwithstanding the demand made in their favor by Mdmc. Antoina de Lagzerol. Bail has been offered for them, but has been refused by the court. All aro deserving people. M. Viallct, for instance, is a small farmer with five little children. His absence from his home is ruinous. These have now been in prison for more than seven weeks, yet the gendarme has not been arrested who shot dead Regis Andre, a fellow-manifest ant there, firing deliberately on him at short range to finish him, after a first shot had brought him helpless to the ground. The poor man, a small farmer with a young family, had taken refuge from his pursuer behind a tree.'