environs, an interest which will be easily
understood, and which filled the hall with an
anxious and overflowing throng. The bitter
reproaches which Lesnier's advocate directly
addressed against, the three accused were
richly deserved, although they do not accord
with our forms of criminal justice. Monsieur
the President Delange summed up. The jury,
after an hour and half's consideration, replied
negatively to the questions of homicide and
iincendiarism relative to Lespagne, and
affirmatively to those of blows resulting in death,
without the intention of causing it, and of
subornation of false witnesses. The woman
Lespagne and Daignaud were declared guilty
of false witness. Attenuating circumstances
were admitted in favour of the three accused.
In consequence of this verdict, the three
accused were each condemned to twenty
years of hard labour.

What the "attenuating circumstances" were,
Heaven may know, but no mortal can guess,
unless M.Lesnier will have the magnanimity to
suggest any in his forthcoming autobiography.
All that one is able to make out of the meaning
of "attenuating circumstances"  in France is,
that they are the representatives, in so many
letters and syllables, of an unwillingness to
strike the last irrevocable blow; they are the
sobering influence which time interposes
between the commission of a crime and its
punishment; they are the angels of mercy
who shout to justice, " Beware lest preventive
punishment become revenge and retaliation!"
they are benevolent fictions raised to temper
the severity of deserved retribution; they are
the John Does and the Richard Roes of
judicial forbearance.

M. Gergeres instituted proceedings at civil
law demanding the sum of fifty thousand
francs damages. The court, in a subsequent
audience devoted to this decision, allowed
ten thousand francs damages to Lesnier. It
now rests with the supreme court (perhaps it
may be done already) to cancel the sentence
of July eighteen hundred and forty-eight, as
irreconcilable with that of March, eighteen
hundred and fifty-five, and to remand the
accused before a new court, to pronounce a
final and definitive judgment on their fate.
The man Lespagne will probably get hard
labour for life.

The immense revulsion in the tide of
Lesnier's existence can be appreciated only by
himself; and scarcely by himself, yet. It
takes time for such a series of events to ferment
and work themselves clear, in a man's
thoughts and feelings. Lookers on can only
say, that if similar judicial errors are happily
ming rarer from year to year, the real
point to be arrived at is, to make their
commission impossible. Again, too, that if
committed, they should not be irretrievable. No
man living can be secure that he shall never
be the object of unfounded accusations; no
man can be sure of not being surprised,
unconsciously mixed up with doubtful and even
suspicious circumstances. And if thlngs go
wrong; if a sentence past recal is pronounced
—without entertaining the entire abolition of
the punishment of death in certain cases— the
facts thus briefly related are sufficient to make
us ponder seriously the question, whether
we have a right to hang, or not, criminals
who have been found guilty of murder, by
twelve men of fallible judgment, except upon
evidence that amounts to demonstration of
guilt.

The newspapers report that one of the jury,
who condemned Lesnier, went and shook hands
with him, expressing at the same time his
regrets and his felicitations. We can sympathise
with the tempest and struggle in that juror's
mind, and congratulate him on the happiness
he must feel now, on remembering that
Lesnier was only sentenced to hard labour
for life. But the judge who has ever
hung an innocent man— can he banish
from his presence, by night or by day, the
earnest, tearful, pale, protesting phantom,
to whom the last words he deigned to
address were, " the Lord have mercy on
YOUR SOUL!"

In a French newspaper, bearing the date
of July the eleventh, eighteen hundred and
fifty-five, appears the following: " By order
of the Emperor, his Excellency the Minister
of Agriculture, Commerce, and Public Works,
has just named Monsieur Lesnier, Son,
government commissary to the coal-mine
company of La Mayenne and La Sarthe.
Monsieur Lesnier, late schoolmaster, con-
demned in eighteen hundred and forty-seven,
to hard labour for life for murder and arson,
had, by his exemplary conduct, merited the
confidence of the commissaire of the Bagne,
who employed him in his office when, seven
years after his condemnation, his innocence
was completely demonstrated, thanks to the
pious and active devotion of his father. In
consequence of a judgment pronounced
agaiust the real perpetrators of the double
ciime, whose manoeuvres had misled the
authorities, he has been discharged, by a
decree of the Court of Assizes of the Haute
Garonne of the twenty-seventh of June,
from the accusation brought against him.
This formal reparation did not completely
pay the debt owed by society; and it has
been the wish of his majesty, in giving M.
Lesnier an honourable employment, to
repair the ruin brought upon him by a fatal
judicial error."

This is satisfactory, and as it should be.
But if M. Lesnier, instead of being
condemned to forced work for life, had been
buried in quicklime within the precincts
of a jail, all the reparation that society
and the Secretary of State could have
made would be the restoration of what re-
mained of his remains to his friends, to
receive the posthumous compliment of decent
burial.