CRIME AND FEMALE OPINION

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIII, Issue 112, 13 May 1902, Page 2

CRIME AND FEMALE OPINION

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —Allow me to thank you most sincerely for your pointed and firm-ly-written leader in Saturday's "Star." The concluding paragraph should be a lesson to tha singular gentlemen of the jury whose feelings were so hurt, doubtless, by our strong old judge. What I wish to call attention to now. is the action of .an assertive section of the sex we have yielded to on too many points already. The National Coimcil of Women (save the mark!) has decreed in its wisdom "that all sentences for serious offences should be decided as to duration by the reform, mark you, of the criminal." Pray, who is to be arbiter of a human, beast's reform? A- committee of these ladies, perhaps! They would soon land us in the sickening slough we read^ so much of as obtaining in America, where such flabby ladies as these load criminals with every favour nearly that they can bestow. As a sequence, naturally, these same egregious women would abolish the death penalty. Let them beware. From the days of the tortures in the Roman Colosseum down-to the Spanish bull-ring, and, in a lesser degree, to the present brutal force employed on the football field, women have shown how tender (!) their mercies often are; and let them be thankful that they will never have it in their power to destroy altogether the one prerogative of unfortunate man; '''they" will never sit on the judicial bench to try a human patyr with a ddad soul. Never, pray God! —I am, etc., , FIAT JtTSTITIA. Devonport, May 12.