he is condemned. Is it necessary to say what there is in this dangerous to
society, to justify such attacks?

What will be the influence, the moral authority, of those laws whose
application is absolutely subordinate to a question of money? Ought not
civil justice, like criminal justice, to be accessible to all?

When people are too poor to be able to invoke the benefits of a law
eminently preservative and tutelary, ought not society to assure the
application, through respect for the honor and repose of families?

But let us leave this woman, who will remain all her life the victim of a
brutal and perverted husband, because she is too poor to obtain a
matrimonial separation by law. Let us speak of Jeanne Duport's brother.
This man left a den of corruption to enter the world again; he has paid the
penalty of his crime by expiation. What precautions has society taken to
prevent his falling back into crime? None.

Has any one, with charitable foresight, rendered possible his return to
well-doing, in order to be able to punish, as one should punish, in a
becoming manner, if he shows himself incorrigible? No.

The contagious influence of your jails is so well known, and so justly
dreaded, that he who comes out from them is everywhere an object of
scorn, aversion, and alarm. Were he twenty times an honest man, he would
scarcely find occupation anywhere. And what is more: the penalty of a
ticket-of-leave banishes him to small localities, where his past life
must be well known; and here he will have no means of exercising the
exceptionable employment often imposed on the prisoners by the contractors
of the maisons centrales. If the liberated convict has the courage to