CIVILLY DEAD

Manawatu Times, Volume III, Issue 23, 5 January 1878, Page 3

CIVILLY DEAD

A sad story of how a liviug man can be. legally killed lias recently become the property of the public, and shows the advantages' of the system of police supervision and official registration" of which our French neighbours are so proud. Some ten or twelve years ago a young man was drawn for the conscription, and left his native village to serve his country. For five years he remained with his regiment and then obtained his discharge ; but having no particular reason • for returning to his village, set him-<* self to work m the neighborhood where he had last been quartered: Last year a desire for matrimony came upon him, and au opportunity did not long' tarry. According to the law, he applied to the village authorities for those numerous documents which French law insists upon before permitting a grown-up and responsible person of either sex to enter upon the married state, and thus indirectly furnishes both reason and excuse for the frequent absence of all ceremonies, whether of dhurch or State. In due course the reply came back that the applicant had no need of his baptismal or: any other certificate, inasmuch ajs he h&a died at the hulks of Toulon m 187& This was pleasant news for himself and his intended, and he at first believed that the reply was merely a display of municipal joking. Aper- . sonal inspection of the registers, however, proved the truth of the official assertion. Luckily the wouldbe husband had made some friends haying influence, who insisted upon •the mystery Ipeing cleared up, and after some pressure the authorities with ill-grace consented to make inquiries. , From these it ultimately appeared that soon after the applicant's enlistment he had whilst sleeping been robbed of his money, watch, and paperi by a man who was sometime afterwards arrested on a 'different charge. . On being .asked his name, he gave that contained m his livret, and subsequently adopted it altogether. After-c6m--mitting all sorts of crimes, anii visiting half the prisons m France under his assumed name, he ultimately died a convict at Toulon : andlby the prison authorities of that place news of hjs death and the principal items of his career were sent to the native place of the man. whose name he had adopted. With their usual stolid indifference to facts, the French : officials/for" a long time insisted that the applicant was dead according to the registers of his own village, and that nothing m time would bring him to life again ; and they .consequently refused him the necessary papers without which he could not be legally married. After some time, however, they consented to cancel the evidence of his death, and restore him to civil life»again. The history is. instructive, And shows some of the absurdities of the French system, which after all is no check upoti the vicious, but merely an annoyance to honest and easy-going citizens. - k