JUSTICE STUPIFIED.

Evening Star, Issue 10783, 18 November 1898, Page 4

JUSTICE STUPIFIED.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —Your article to-night headed “The Queensland Fiasco ” should draw attention to another bank breakdown nearer homo. The pertinent criticism applied to the one the reader can hardly help directing against the other as well. How truly you remark with reference to the deliverance of the Queensland National Bank directors from the feeble clutches of the law: “It still remains to the public to wish to know how it so often happens that what is palpable wrong-doing escapes punishment. Are we to believe that a prosperous concern honestly conducted can, from a 12 per cent, business, in five years become rotten and bankrupt, and that nobody can be got at for cheating the public in these colonies?” You also inform us that “after a long trial the accused have been found not guilty and acquitted without any evidence being led on their behalf.” We did not get even the satisfaction of a trial over our local disaster. It seems that we arc altogether too pawky yet. Had the Scottish system obtained here, doubtless we would have had that satisfaction before this. It worked promptly in the conviction of the Citv of Glasgow Rank directors. When the Juries Bill was under consideration it was funny to read the observations of one of the Legislative Councillors to the eifect that the abolition of the grand jury would sweep away one of the bulwarks of our glorious liberty, leaving us defenceless against State persecution. Did ho mean liberty to help in palpable wrong-doing, I wonder? He appeared to forget that public opinion is more effective than the grand jury, and that money has the means, if it chooses, of stirring up attention to any instance of hardship or unjustifiable prosecution.—lam, etc., N. Dunedin, November 12.