SEDITION.

Greymouth Evening Star, 13 March 1917, Page 6

SEDITION.

THE HAMILTON CASE.

TIIK MAGISTRATE'S JTDCK

MENT

[y.Z. PUESS. ASSOCIATION.!

HAMILTON, March 12

Judgment was delivered at the Magistrate's Court, Hamilton, by Mr Itowsoi), S.M-, in connection with the sedition charges against Micliaol Francis Cusack, who was charged recently that on. 15th February he published seditious utterances in a speech delivered to certain men employed at the liouohu Freezing Works, inciting them to strike, which utterance was seditious in that the publication thereof had a tendency to interfere with the supply of frozen moat required by his Majesty for purposes in connection with the present warThe information was laid under the additional war regulations made on 4th December, .1910. At the hearing Mr 1\ Macassey (Crown Solicitor) represented the Crown, and Mr A- Moody (Auckland) appeared for the defendant. During the course of a lengthy judgment the Magistrate said that it seemed incredible to any reasonable-minded person that anyone, in the present state of affairs, where the very existence of the Empire was at stake, could be so selfish, so unpatriotic, and so blind to his own real interests as to do anything which anight even indirectly adversely affect .in the slightest degree the result of' the struggle for life or death now taking place. The very idea that a man engaged in the essential industries" striking at the present time naturally aroused feelings of indignation in the minds of rational people, but one must not let those feelings interfere with the judicial estimate circumstances of the case- Each case must he decided upon its merits,. The evidence shows that defendant is a respectable man and not a professional agitator. The regulations under which the information was laid have only recently been passed, and probably the full effect of their provisions is not generally known- The tendency of the words used by defendant under the circumstances, in his opinion, was to bring about a strike, and, in fact, a strike actually followed. Defendant would be fined £SO, with costs £4 9s Gd, or in default three months' imprisonment. One month was. given to pay-