the case of M. Wilson.

The jury system of France resembles, in a general way, in its alleged
safeguarding of the public liberties, and in its injustices,
inequalities, and obstinate bringing to the service of Themis the
uncertain aid of Chance and of Prejudice, that of the United States.
Each year, in each canton of France, these generally unwilling aids in
the administration of justice are selected among the respectable
citizens by a council composed of Maires, Juges de Paix, and Conseillers
generaux. Their names, forwarded to the central judicial authority, are
subjected to a second revision, by a commission sitting in the chief
town or the capital. In this manner is obtained the "general list of the
jury;" from this is drawn by lot, every three months, and in Paris every
fortnight, the jury of each criminal session, composed of thirty-six
titular jurors and four supplementary. All citizens, having the required
qualifications, between the ages of thirty and seventy, are obliged to
serve, under a penalty of five hundred francs. The juror receives a very
small sum for travelling expenses if the court is at a distance from his
residence, but nothing at all if it be in his neighborhood.
Consequently, these arbitrary summonses in the name of Justice are
viewed, generally, with as much disfavor by the recipients thereof as in
other countries, with the exception of the members of some such leisure
class as retired officers on half-pay. The tendencies of certain classes
of jurors are well recognized, the law and the evidence being as they
may;--thus, before a jury of peasants and farmers, the young girls
guilty of infanticide are nearly always acquitted, the rural economy
entertaining a natural aversion to illegitimate children, reared at the
public cost to become vagabonds at the age of fifteen. On the contrary,
incendiaries, counterfeiters, and those accused of assaults upon young
children in the fields, receive no mercy at the hands of these honest
countrymen. The severity of the juries of Versailles is well known.
Composed of market-gardeners, ex-officers, and retired shopkeepers and
employes, living in small cottages in the suburbs, and exposed night and
day to the incursions of the Parisian marauders, they give always to the
prosecution the verdict which it demands, and sometimes even more. There
was a case, a few years ago, of three young rascals who set out from
Paris to assassinate an old innkeeper of Argenteuil; the