On Mo nday, the French Government introduced their Bill A i rected
against the Anarchists. Clause 1 provides that persons inciting to murder, theft, pillage, arson, and dyna- mite explosions, or declares a jury, defending these acts, shall be tried not y, but by the Magistrates summarily. Clause 2 that whoever shall have committed an act of Anarchist propagandism by extolling attacks against persons nr property, shall be punished by from three months' to two years' imprisonment, and by a fine of from 100 fr. to 2,000 fr. Clause 3 authorises banishment in certain cases at the discretion of the Court. Imprisonment will always be by solitary confinement. Clause 4 prohibits the publication of the whole, or a part, of the proceedings of the trial in every criminal or common law case which has to do with Anarchists. Infringement of this will be punished by from six days' to a month's imprisonment, and by a fine of from 1,000 fr. to 10,000 fr. The measure is perhaps too drastic; and the provisions not against acts but arguments, not crimes but theories, may have the effect of increasing the intellectual attractiveness of Anarchism.
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