Then will the imprisoned artisan see in his mind's eyes, during the long and sleepless nights, those who are dear to him, wan, gaunt, haggard, exhausted, stretched almost naked upon filthy straw, or huddled close together to warm their frozen limbs.And, should he afterwards be acquitted, it is ruin and desolation that he finds on his return to his poor dwelling.
And then, after that long cessation from labor, he will find it difficult to return to his old employers.How many days will be lost in seeking for work! and a day without employment is a day without bread!
Let us repeat our opinion, that if, under various circumstances, the law did not afford to the rich the facility of giving bail, we could only lament over all such victims of individual and inevitable misfortune.
But since the law does provide the means of setting provisionally at liberty those who possess a certain sum of money, why should it deprive of this advantage those very persons, for whom liberty is indeed indispensable, as it involves the existence of themselves and families?
Is there any remedy for this deplorable state of things? We believe there is.
The law has fixed the minimum of bail at five hundred francs.Now five hundred francs represent, upon the average, six months' labor of an industrious workman.
If he have a wife and two children (which is also about the average), it is evidently quite impossible for him to have saved any such sum.
So, to ask of such a man five hundred francs, to enable him to continue to support his family, is in fact to put him beyond the pale of the law, though, more than any one else, he requires its protection, because of the disastrous consequences which his imprisonment entails upon others.
Would it not be equitable and humane, a noble and salutary example, to accept, in every case where bail is allowed (and where the good character of the accused could be honorably established), moral guarantees, in the absence of material ones, from those who have no capital but their labor and their integrity--to accept the word of an honest man to appear upon the day of trial? Would it not be great and moral, in these days to raise the value of the lighted word, and exalt man in his own eyes, by showing him that his promise was held to be sufficient security?
Will you so degrade the dignity of man, as to treat this proposition as an impossible and Utopian dream? We ask, how many prisoners of war have ever broken their parole, and if officers and soldiers are not brothers of the workingman?
Without exaggerating the virtue of promise-keeping in the honest and laborious poor, we feel certain, that an engagement taken by the accused to appear on the day of trial would be always fulfilled, not only with fidelity, but with the warmest gratitude--for his family would not have suffered by his absence, thanks to the indulgence of the law.
There is also another fact, of which France may well be proud.It is, that her magistrates (although miserably paid as the army itself) are generally wise, upright, humane, and independent; they have the true feeling of their own useful and sacred mission; they know how to appreciate the wants and distresses of the working classes, with whom they are so often brought in contact; to them might be safely granted the power of fixing those cases in which a moral security, the only one that can be given by the honest and necessitous man, should be received as sufficient.[10]
Finally, if those who make the laws have so low an opinion of the people as to reject with disdain the suggestions we have ventured to throw out, let them at least so reduce the minimum of bail, as to render it available for those who have most need to escape the fruitless rigors of imprisonment.Let them take as their lowest limit, the month's wages of an artisan--say eighty francs.
This sum would still be exorbitant; but, with the aid of friends, the pawnbroker's, and some little advances, eighty francs might perhaps be found--not always, it is true--but still sometimes--and, at all events, many families would be rescued from frightful misery.
Having made these observations, let us return to Dagobert's family, who, in consequence of the preventive arrest of Agricola, were now reduced to an almost hopeless state.