The legal principle that the State ought to indemnify material and
moral injury inflicted by its functionaries, through malice or
negligence, on a citizen who has done nothing to subject himself
to prosecution or condemnation, cannot be seriously contested.
But the whole difficulty is reduced to deciding in what cases the
right to indemnification ought to be recognised, and then
to providing a fund out of which the State can discharge this
duty.
For the latter purpose it would be necessary to include an
adequate sum in the Budget. This was done in Bavaria, in 1888, by
setting apart 5,000 marks annually; and the first who profited by
this provision received a pension of 300 marks per annum, after
being rendered incapable of work by seven years' imprisonment for
a crime which he had not committed. But if the policy of
retrenchment imposed on the European States by their insane
military expenditure and their chronic wars prevents the carrying
out of this proposal, there is the Italian precedent of the
Treasury of Fines, which, with the fines inflicted, or which ought
to be inflicted on convicted persons, and the product of prison
labour, would provide the necessary amount for the indemnities
which the State ought to pay to innocent persons who have been
condemned or prosecuted, as well as to the victims of offences.
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