while courts have the civility to exist they should refuse
to surrender any part of their duties and responsibilities to such
exceedingly private persons as those under six feet of earth, or sealed
up in habitations of hewn stone. Persons no longer affectible by human
events should be denied a voice in determining the character and trend
of them. Respect for the wishes of the dead is a tender and beautiful
sentiment, certainly. Unfortunately, it can not be ascertained that
they have any wishes. What commonly go by that name are wishes once
entertained by living persons who are now dead, and who in dying
renounced them, along with everything else. Like those who entertained
them, the wishes are no longer in existence. "The wishes of the dead,"
therefore, are not wishes, and are not of the dead. Why they should
have anything more than a sentimental influence upon those still in the
flesh, and be a factor to be reckoned with in the practical affairs
of the super-graminous world, is a question to which the merely human
understanding can find no answer, and it must be referred to the
lawyers. When "from the tombs a doleful sound" is vented, and "thine ear"
is invited to "attend the cry," an intelligent forethought will suggest
that you inquire if it is anything about property. If so pass on--that
is no sacred spot.

V.

Much of the testimony in French courts, civil and martial, appears to
consist of personal impressions and opinions of the witnesses. All very
improper and mischievous, no doubt, if--if what? Why, obviously, if
the judges are unfit to sit in judgment By designating them to sit the
designating power assumes their fitness--assumes that they know enough
to take such things for what they are worth, to make the necessary
allowances; if needful, to disregard a witness's opinion altogether. I
do not know if they are fit. I do not know that they do make the needful
allowances. It is by no means clear to me that any judge or juror,
French, American or Patagonian, is competent to ascertain the truth when
lying witnesses are trying to conceal it under the direction of skilled
and conscientiousless attorneys licensed to deceive. But his competence
is a basic assumption of the law vesting him with the duty of deciding.
Having chosen him for that duty the French law very logically lets him
alone to decide for himself what is evidence and what is not. It does
not trust him a little but altogether. It puts him under c