UNKNOWN

Auckland Star, Volume XXVI, Issue 5477, 7 February 1885, Page 5

UNKNOWN

Sontouco of Derail.

(PilOM Oil: LONDON COH!HS!frOSI>KNT.)

Tin: legal farce initiated at Exeter some weeks ago was brought to a fitting conclusion on Tuesday last, when tho Lord

Chief Justice of England, without assuming the dreaded "black cap," passed upon Dudley and Stevens a fictitious soutonco of death. The men, who naturally folt a little upset notwithstanding the purely farcical

naturo of tho proceedings, throw themselvos upon tho mercy of tho Court, und were then transferred to ilolloway Prison ''under the care of two warders." They had barely arrived when a message runo from Sir William Haroonrt to the effect that the mock death sentenco would bo indefinitely respited. Whether such non«onsical goings-on aro calculated to enhance tho dignity of the law I leavo you to say. Tho newspapers, ono and nil, protest against the death sontonee. "Thore is," says one of them pregnantly, "something repugnant to our deepest sense of justice and propriety in the spectacle of these shipwrecked mariners being brought into court, as, they wero yesterday, to hear the lost dread sentonce of tlio law passed against them, when the judges themselves were pokfcctly aware that tho Homo Secretary was waiting to respite them. Dudley and Stevens will noi. bo punished. They will, on the contrary, be sooner or later pardoned. They havc,iudoed, gone through enough already. To the horrors of twentyfour (lay*' Mini-starvation, let us add the illness and .siili'ering which followod it, and from which none of tho men had recovered when the rescuing vo.-soj landed them at Falmouth. Then thoro havo ensued iv quick succession thoir arrest upon their own frank avowal, their detention, their trill at Exoter, their subsequent attendance iv the Court to hear the legal points arguod, and nnco their condemnation they havo beon close prisoners in Ilolloway (iaol. Yesterday saw the cullniuutioH of thoir trials in tho pronounce ment of fictitious doom ; and, inasmuch as the commutation of that sentence is but a suspension, theru should not be a moment's unnecessary delay before tho message of royal clemency is despatched to the gaol. Further than that, tho mercy extended to these sorely-tried prisoners ought not to bo measured according to tho just horror which ovcrybody feels at the act of shedding human blood in order to savo one's own existence. We quite agree that no "necessity " can warrant tho taking of an inr>ocent life. If thoro woro reason to boliove that Park.or was killed at n timo when Dudley and Stephens wero in a state of mind to arguo (j.* the public and tho Court argue about the qu'esiion, th.en wo should say—let the law bo vindicated, and t|io sanctity of human life upheld, by a punishment of penal servitude for any number of years. Do the judges who cito statutes and authorities, howovor, roaliso ono tithe of the pangs of body and brriin endured by men who come out of such a fiery furnace of ailj'ictiou as awaited tho crew of the illfated Mignonotto ? It is a trial to the judicial temper if lunch bo late; and for dinner not only to bo delayed, but to be altogether withheld, would involve a departure from composure which would oako Bracton and Halo very untimely, What if broakfa3t, lunch, dinner, mid suppor too wero to be donied for a whole day. for two tiaj's, or even a week ? Only after the injudicial faculty of imagination has beon freely exercised can liny distant estimate be formed of what fihose twenty days prior to J.'nrker's death i." the open boat, twelve hundred u:iLw frenj land, really signified to tho men who went through them all. It wns not simply the tortures of hunger and thirst, tho over increasing weakness, and tho cruel raising of fresh hopes ovory morning only to die down boforo night. Thore was all tho measureless misery of prolonged solitude on tho gigantic waste of water?, tho boundless Pacifi* lapping into the boat, tho dark nights, of unrelieved suffering, tho days of scorching heat, the peril of death by tempest staring every soul in tho face fof threo long weeks. A couple of tins of turnips and a turtle woro all tho nourishment that went to support tho physical framo of throe men and a boy during this unexampled ordeal. At the closo of it—after such agony of mind and body—our point is that these mon could no longer be considered morally responsible. They wero living corpses, not casuists or citizen?, and their deed was tho delirium of the fovor of starvation, a3 much outside human law as aro tho ravings of a dying lunatic."