Then, to the false and exaggerated cable of the correspondent the “write-up man” lends his imagination; significant and important facts are omitted altogether, and the public is led to believe that an Italian criminal trial consists of a yelling bandit in a straitjacket, with a hysterical judge and frenzied lawyer abusing each other’s character and ancestry. Let the writer state, at the outset, that he has never in his legal experience seen a judge presiding with greater courtesy, patience, fairness, or ability, or keeping, as a general rule, under all the circumstances, so perfect a control over his court, as the president of the assize in which the prosecution of the Camorra is being conducted; nor is he familiar with any legal procedure better fitted to ascertain the truth of the charges being tried. In studying the Camorra trial at Viterbo, or any other Italian or French criminal proceeding, the reader must bear in mind that there is a fundamental distinction between them and our own, and that there are two great and theoretically entirely different systems of criminal procedure, one of which is the offspring of the Imperial Roman law and the other entirely Anglo-Saxon. One is the Roman or inquisitorial system, and the other the English or controversial. Under the former the officers of the state are charged with the duty of ferreting out and punishing crime wherever found, and the means placed at their disposal are those likely to be most effective for the purpose. The theory of the latter is that, to some extent at least, a criminal trial is the result of a dispute between two persons, one the accuser and the other the accused, and that the proceeding savors of a private law-suit. Now, it is obvious that, in principle at least, the two systems differ materially. In the one, the only thing originally considered was the best way to find out whether a criminal were guilty and to lock him up, irrespective of whether or not any private individual had brought an accusation against him. In the other, somebody had to make a complaint and “get his law” by going after it himself to a very considerable extent.