EXECUTION OF TAHI KAKA.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1164, 27 June 1911, Page 7

EXECUTION OF TAHI KAKA.

LETTER BY THE GOVERNOR AXD WK. JELLICOE. Mr. Jellicoe received the following letter from his Excellency tho Governor yesterday to which lie forwarded the reply appended:— June 23, 1911. "Sir,—l beg to inform you that I have to-day received a telegram from his Majesty s Secretary of Htato for the Colonies requesting me to inform you that his Majesty has received your petition for the commutation of tho death sentence passed on Tahi Kaka, a'ud that his Majesty commands that you should be referred to my Government, to which has beau delegated the prerogative of mercy. —I have the honour to be, sir, "Your obedient servant, "ISLINGTON, Governor." June 26, 1911. "Sir, —I have the honour to acknowledge tho receipt of a letter bearing to-day's-'Wellington post-mark, but dated by you from Government House, "Wellington, on the 23rd instant, wherein you inform, mo that you had that day received from the Secretary of State for the Colonies his Majesty's commands that I should be referred to your Government if 1 desired to invoke the prerogative of mercy for tho Maori lad, Tahi Kaka. I assume'from this communication (f] that his Majesty could not have been aware when he communicated his gracious command to you that your Government, on the very day it became known that I had cabled petitioning for a commutation of the deat'i sentence,' actually iixed the execution to take place at eight o'clock on the following morning, or that immediately the execution Was so lixed I informed "you of tho petition and asked you to delay the execution for a lew hours to enable tho King's pleasure to be known, or that you ignored my request and dispatched tho boy, and never so much as acknowledged the receipt of my communication; and (2) that his Majesty's commands evidently contemplate that your Government, as delegates of the prerogative of mercy— tue sole arbiters of life and death—would afford me an opportunity of applying for the exercise of that 'prerogative anil would consider any proper grounds I might-, desire to urge. How can your Government now allow this to be done, seeing that with such very unseemly haste the life of t'he boy has been taken, and what is the use, in the circumstance?, of your to-day communicating to me his Majesty's commands? 1 have the honour to request that you will communicate this my reply to tho Secretary of State for tho Colonies for submission to his Majesty in order - that his Majesty may bo made aware of the treatment my petition has received and tho manner in which his delegates of tho prerogative of mercy exercise that prerogative in the case of a defencelss child of seventeen years of ago who was only one degree removed from thn savage and whom the jury, on the evidence, had in fact recommended to mercy.—l have the honour to be, 'Tour obedient servant, "£. G. JELLICOE."

IBy Telegraph—Press Association.) Timaru, Juno 26. At the Unitarian service last night ;•- resolution was carried unanimously nrotesrinj . against the execution of ' 'i'ahl Knkn. Thq minister (the Ker. Mr. Cbapplc) said capital punishment was'no deterrent, and in this case allowance should have been made for the inherited tendencies of accused, a member of a race lately savag-.'. Th? mover-of t!ip resolution dwelt nji the latter point, and said the. execution «as more uoiriblo than the murder.