London Legal Letter. said that Paris alone contained twenty-five or thirty special prisons, " without counting the Vade in pace of numerous religious societies." Nearly all these abodes, such as the Grand Chatelet, the Petit Chatelet, the Bastille, and the Conciergerie, had subterranean cells, which the light and air rarely visited. In the Petit Chatelet a day's confinement brought with it the blessing of suffocation, for the cells were some thirty feet in depth. While in the Abbey of St. Germain des Pres a man of middle height could not stand erect, and the straw of the victims' beds floated upon the stagnant water. In the Chausse d'Hypocras, a portion of the Grand Chatelet, the prisoners were compelled to float their feet in the water continually. A cell called the Fin dAise was a rendezvous for reptiles, vermin, and filth, and the inmates were low ered into the Fosse by means of pulley and rope. The cells of the Bastille resembled those of the Chatelet. King Louis XL, made immortal by Scott, was skilful in de
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vising atrocities for the purpose of aggra vating the fate of the prisoners; and he it was who caused the iron cage to be erected in one of the towers of the Bastille, in which cage Guillaume, Bishop of Verdun, resided for fourteen years. The Leads of Venice was perhaps the most notorious of all the prisons which flourished during these dark days. The curiosity which leads one to glance at such subjects as punishments and prisons may result in a knowledge of facts possess ing little worth; but certainly one gets a clearer prospective of the changed conditions which time effects, for legal decrees and procedure reflect social, intellectual, and moral progress. The difference between quarter ing and electrocution denotes an advance, a rational progress; but the difference be tween burning alive and the abolition of capital punishment would be in stricter har mony with the scientific tendency of the times.
LONDON LEGAL LETTER. London, Sept. 4, 1891. ' I "HE death of Lord President Inglis, Justice*. General of Scotland, at the ripe age of eightyone, has prominently directed public attention to that ancient judicature, the Court of Session. No European tribunal has produced so large a num ber of quaint and strongly marked personalities as the Supreme Court of Scotland. The native humor, the convivial habits, the drolleries for which the older worthies of the Scottish Bench were notorious, often tended to divert the atten tion of the public, whom they amused, from the considerable legal attainments which these men possessed. Yet, while so much may be conceded to their professional capacity, no impartial specta tor would have pronounced the Court of Session a great court. The judges were generally sound lawyers, and performed their duties with ordinary ability : but until thirty years ago the future of the Scottish judicature was a source of some anxiety
to those familiar with its working. In 1858 Mr. Inglis, the then Lord Advocate, was appointed Lord Justice Clerk, and in 1867 he was promoted to the post of Lord Justice General. From the first Lord Inglis gave evidence of remarkable judicial faculty; but after his promotion in 1867, it became recognized on all hands that a lawyer and a judge of the very first rank had appeared. He retained his supremacy to the last, his judg ments commanding an acquiescence from suitors and the general public such as in any country is only given to the very greatest judges. It will be known to many of your readers that the title of .' Lord.'- enjoyed by the Scottish judges, is one of courtesy alone; they do not become peers even, for life. Another word of explanation may not be out of place. The Court of Session consists, so far as civil matters are concerned, of two branches, — the " outer house " and the " inner house." The Lords Ordinary — that is to say, the judges
