powerful enough to impose laws. Men | The first three months of each year in driven to their own resources for security Corsica are periodically taken up with the unite themselves into families or collec- elections of the mayors and juges de paix, tions of families for mutual defence. both of which offices are held by CorsiUnder good government the clan becomes cans. The roll of electors is made up by no longer necessary; but the abominable a commission presided over by the mayor; occupation of Corsica by the Genoese, and the appeals against their decision are which lasted four centuries, was no gov- heard by the juge de paix, who in reality ernment at all. The country was plun- makes out the lists. Now, in most of the dered, and justice was sold to the highest communes the electors are divided bebidder. Men without the support of a tween two clans, who live in the same powerful family, and without any legal street, and pass each other a dozen times protection, felt themselves lost if they re- a day without greeting. The victory of mained isolated. They formed alliances the one or of the other is often decided with more influential families, and were by two or three votes, and it is therefore willing enough to perform whatsoever of immense importance to be able to enroll services were required of them in return half-a-dozen friends, or strike out the same for the guaranteed safety of their families. number of enemies. Upon this power A Corsican will boast of the number of depends the possession of the mairie. It his relations as an Englishman might is easy enough for the juge de paix to add boast of the strength of his arm. The to the number of his supporters. Certain duties of the patron of the clan are not electors belong to two communes, either confined to the exercise of political influ- by the ties of marriage or by being landence in behalf of his constituents. A lords in both. According to the necessicertain patron of an important clan in the ties of party, they vote for the one or for north of Corsica, whose lands are scat- the other. If they belong to the clan tered among a dozen distant communes, opposite to that of the juge de paix, he has turned large tracts of arable land into finds that they belong exclusively to anpasture for the free use of his tenants, other commune, and have no right to vote who, moreover, have the privilege of cut in his. If they are his friends, they are ting whatsoever wood they require from sent for; and if they cannot come, their his plantations. His generosity is not vote is recorded without them. He can thrown away. It has gained him perhaps further add to the roll of his friends by an additional three hundred votes. The inscribing the names of electors who have supporters who in another age would have left the commune ten, twenty, or even followed him to war now follow him to the thirty years ago, and have long been enpoll. A client may be in want of thirty rolled in the commune to which they have francs, but may be unable to sell the wine removed. At St. Florent, a commune he made last vintage. He instantly turns with two hundred electors, the majority is to his patron. The wine is loaded on a generally determined by four or five votes. mule, and a journey of thirty miles has to In 1884 the juge de paix inscribed the be made to sell the wine to the patron who names of six road-overseers belonging to does not want it. A Corsican not belong- neighboring communes, on the pretext ing to a clan if there existed such an that, as their chief, the inspector of roads anomaly and unable to rely upon the and bridges, lived at St. Florent, that comsupport of his patron in the critical mo- mune was their legal place of abode. ments in his life would, in the present The Cour de Cassation reversed this political condition of Corsica, be in a more decision by an order dated May 24. In pitiable state than he would have been, the mean time the six overseers had voted excommunicated seven hundred years ago. at the elections of May 4. Next year the One must have lived in Corsica to real-juge de paix, totally disregarding the order ize the importance of success at the elec- of the court, again inscribed their names; tions. At first sight the chiefs of clans a fresh injunction was issued; and the would seem to have little compensation party, judging that this source of electors for their various services to their clients; was exhausted, were driven to seek others. but in reality they enjoy to the fullest ex- There are, besides, a dozen methods of tent that passion which ruled the lives of preventing adversaries from voting. The such men as Richelieu and Napoleon. To simplest is to refuse them on the ground lead men, to uphold their interests against of insufficient description. There is not their enemies, to triumph over fallen op- much variety in the surnames in Corsica, ponents these are the functions of the and children are usually given two Chrischief of a powerful clan. tian names. By inadvertence one of the

Endless roguery is resorted to to escape that there is no confidence in the tribu from military service. A friend some- nals. The lower courts are administered times requests the mayor not to register by the juges de paix. They are members the birth of a son. Years afterwards, a of a clan; the higher courts depend on day or two before the conscription, the juries with clan influence also. Indeed, military authorities receive an anonymous if the magistrates' impartiality were irreletter denouncing the young man who has proachable, it would not be believed in. thus escaped his legal obligations, and he The members of his clan who were acis promptly entered in the registers with quitted would regard it as an act of perthe date of his birth, and the words "omit-sonal friendship; an enemy, if condemned, ted par oubli." Favors without end to howsoever guilty, would attribute his confriends, annoyances without end to ene-viction to malice. Unhappily, the magismies, must bring their natural consequence trates are in so false a position that they - an exasperation difficult for an Englishman to imagine. Picture a little mountain village divided between two hostile parties whose every passion is stirred by a fierce electioneering contest for three months in the year. The day comes, and one party triumphs probably by an injustice of which it is proud. Day after day the vanquished must meet their conquerors in the village street, and writhe under truculent triumph. The men are so plunged in the interests of their petty politics that they seldom do any work. Their electioneering quarrels are often embittered by hereditary family hatreds. There is no wonder then that Corsica surpasses all civilized European countries in the number of its crimes of violence.

The reader will ask why, if the corruption of the petty officials is so glaring, the sufferers do not appeal to the executive for redress. The answer is that they do, but generally without much hope that their petition will be answered. To touch a mayor or a juge de paix is to strike at the existence of an entire clan; a step which the local executive, following the example of their predecessors, are loth to take. Injunctions are obtained in the superior court, the decision of a juge de paix is reversed; but before the ponderous machinery of law can be set in motion the influence of the powerful clan has rendered its action abortive. I will speak by and by of the independent attitude of the gendarmerie; they have no power over the mayor, be his actions ever so audaciously illegal. One of the recent mayors of Sarterre, a town of five or six thousand inhabitants, learned that the gendarmes had laid an information against one of his friends for not stamping a document. The mayor informed the gendarmes that he had dispensed with the necessity for stamps, and ordered them to withdraw their information. The préfect of Corsica was obliged to interfere in this strange conflict.

Perhaps the gravest evil in Corsica is

are not impartial, and it is sufficient for an accused person to know the clan sympathies of the jury by whom he is to be tried to be certain beforehand whether he will be acquitted or condemned. In civil actions the plaintiff is pretty sure to have secured powerful influence before he ventures to plead his case before the court. In criminal cases the sentences are out of all proportion to the nature of the offence. When long sentences are passed, it does not follow that the convict will complete his punishment if he be of a good clan. A man sentenced to twenty years' penal servitude for violence received an almost immediate reversal of his sentence. A man who may be seen every day in the streets of Ajaccio led the deadly attack on the journalist St. Elene. His friends will tell you that St. Elene died of his wounds; his enemies, that his death resulted from natural causes. Howsoever that may be, the man in question was sentenced to three months in gaol; but all the world knows that he never underwent his punishment, and that he holds the position in the city police that he held before.

Are the Corsicans to be altogether blamed for their hardened incredulity on the subject of legal justice? Since the days when law was first found necessary to protect society, law badly administered has produced one invariable result. The offspring of legal anarchy is crime, and the criminality in Corsica shows to what a frightful depth the tribunals of the island have sunk. Corsicans, trained by four centuries of armed resistance to their Genoese oppressors, accustomed by the traditions of their race to rely on themselves to avenge injuries, and fearing little from an administration that has already proved itself incompetent to enforce order, naturally take the law into their own hands. An insult is offered, or a political dispute arises; what is easier than the discharge of a gun or a stab with a dagger? The maquis is near, and there one is safe. No one who did not know the disorder in

which the country is plunged could understand the enormous proportion of crimes against the person and the alarming increase of banditism. The fact is that nine out of every ten crimes are the result of personal quarrels and family feuds. Scarcely one is from motives of robbery. Where one half of the population oppresses the other half, the continual injustice and petty illegality will goad the oppressed into a state bordering on insanity. A dog killed in a vineyard was the reason given for the vendetta between the Rocchini and the Tafani, which made eleven victims. The part the dog played in the matter is easily understood; the hatred between the two families was sufficient, apart from the dog.

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Thus, witnesses to a murder are very difficult to get; evidence against the accused will render the witness an enemy to the clan. At an election at Palneca, in 1881, a murder was attempted in the village square, in the presence of sixty people. Not a witness could be got. Every one of them affirmed that he had seen nothing of it. Even the wounded man himself, when he had recovered from a bullet in the neck, stated that he could not imagine who had fired upon him. He had had enough, and wanted no second bullet. The prosecution was abandoned.

murderer finds that the murdered are not adequately avenged, and, when the court rises, the work of the juries is finished with a gunshot. Chiarelli is sentenced to ten months in prison for blinding Foata with a pistol shot. "It is not enough for an eye," Foata says; and when Chiarelli returns from prison, he kills him.*

In 1887, in the public square at Sartene, the body of a man lay murdered. His wife appeared, dragging her frightened children after her. She put their fingers in his wounds; she smeared their faces with their father's blood, and, with terrible imprecations, made them swear to avenge him.

When a jury is composed of friends and enemies of the accused, the results are extraordinary. Some feign stupidity and deafness. They did not hear the witIn the political sleep of the Second ness make such and such a statement, or Empire feuds burned low. The govern- they understood him to say the opposite. ment indicated whom it wished elected, The result of all this intimidation is that and competition naturally died out. Such the Corsicans themselves, who have a despotism was good for Corsica. Elec- strained every nerve to paralyze the arm toral quarrels were impossible; and, as of the law, are the first to find that arm one party could no longer triumph over too weak to protect them. The very famanother, there was less hatred, less injus-ily that has exerted itself to protect a tice, and fewer crimes of violence. The annual return of murder cases tried at Bastia fell from 113 to 35. Since 1871 it has risen again to 72; and the reports of the gendarmerie for 1886 give the appalling number of 135-one for every two thousand inhabitants, or four times more than the number in the department of the Seine. Out of the 135, 52 followed immediately upon election disputes; 56 were the result of vendetta. Is it from a wish not to sweep away all traces of ancient customs that the enlightened French government will not take the one step that would stamp out these abuses? In the days when men had to depend on their own arms for justice, vengeance that slept not seemed far nobler than humility or resignation. To ourselves Corsican vengeance is at one time ludicrous, at another horrible, always an anachronism; but it is only because we live under laws which are administered that we regard it so. Any strong-handed government can force its tribunals to be respected; but France seems to treat Corsica only as a museum of obsolete customs. The result is that Corsicans to-day feel for a murderer pity and admiration akin to that which our grandfathers displayed towards him who had killed his man in duel. It is the man "in trouble" who has a claim upon his friends. If he turns bandit, they feed him and protect him against the gendarmerie. If he is arrested, every means will be exhausted to secure his acquittal.

The cross is a threat of death, and he who finds it drawn upon his door knows that he must look for no quarter. In decrees forbidding the carrying of arms in certain districts, exception is officially made in the case of persons notoriously en état d'inimitié. The vendetta neither sleeps nor knows where it may stop. It is not confined to two persons. The quarrels of individuals are taken up by whole families. Not even collateral branches are exempt, and women must take their chances with the men. Indeed, revenge is more artistically complete when the blow falls upon the beautiful and gifted. In 1856 one Joseph Antoine injured a girl named Sanfranchi. Thirty

Sentenced to five years' penal servitude, December 8, 1884.