What will this family do?  To whom will they have recourse?

What will become of these infirm old men, these sickly wives, these little children, unable to gain their daily bread?  If they chance to have a little linen and a few spare clothes, these will be carried to the pawnbroker’s, and thus they will exist for a week or so—­but afterwards?

And if winter adds the rigors of the season to this frightful and inevitable misery?

Then will the imprisoned artisan see in his mind’s eyes, during the long and sleepless nights, those who are dear to him, wan, gaunt, haggard, exhausted, stretched almost naked upon filthy straw, or huddled close together to warm their frozen limbs.  And, should he afterwards be acquitted, it is ruin and desolation that he finds on his return to his poor dwelling.

And then, after that long cessation from labor, he will find it difficult to return to his old employers.  How many days will be lost in seeking for work! and a day without employment is a day without bread!

Let us repeat our opinion, that if, under various circumstances, the law did not afford to the rich the facility of giving bail, we could only lament over all such victims of individual and inevitable misfortune.  But since the law does provide the means of setting provisionally at liberty those who possess a certain sum of money, why should it deprive of this advantage those very persons, for whom liberty is indeed indispensable, as it involves the existence of themselves and families?

Is there any remedy for this deplorable state of things?  We believe there is.

The law has fixed the minimum of bail at five hundred francs.  Now five hundred francs represent, upon the average, six months’ labor of an industrious workman.

If he have a wife and two children (which is also about the average), it is evidently quite impossible for him to have saved any such sum.

So, to ask of such a man five hundred francs, to enable him to continue to support his family, is in fact to put him beyond the pale of the law, though, more than any one else, he requires its protection, because of the disastrous consequences which his imprisonment entails upon others.

Would it not be equitable and humane, a noble and salutary example, to accept, in every case where bail is allowed (and where the good character of the accused could be honorably established), moral guarantees, in the absence of material ones, from those who have no capital but their labor and their integrity—­to accept the word of an honest man to appear upon the day of trial?  Would it not be great and moral, in these days to raise the value of the lighted word, and exalt man in his own eyes, by showing him that his promise was held to be sufficient security?

Will you so degrade the dignity of man, as to treat this proposition as an impossible and Utopian dream?  We ask, how many prisoners of war have ever broken their parole, and if officers and soldiers are not brothers of the workingman?