THE GROSS OUTRAGE BY NATIVES.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume 13, Issue 1063, 6 July 1869, Page 2

THE GROSS OUTRAGE BY NATIVES.

Sm, —l,-with many others, attended at the Resident Magistrate's Court this morning, to hear the investigation of the recent assault and robbery confessedly committed by three Waiohiki natives, the victim being a settler named Grebbie. The facts of this case are already known to your readers. The delinquents were brought to the R.M.s Court by a Maori chief; they tacitly admitted their guilt by consenting to pay, it is said, £30, in order to have the prosecution withdrawn. So, in fact, this gross case never came judicially before the Resident Magistrate at all. The natives were actually in custody; the prosecutor was present; the "information" m the hands of officials: yet a felony was allowed to be quietly compounded, and three dangerous men allowed tft go free and set the law, practically, at defiance. How is this? what would have been done with white men alleged to be guilty of so serious a # crime ? Surely there should not be strict law for white men, and utter impunity granted to Maoris. Such a farcical proceeding as that of this morning in the Besident Magistrate's Court, is calculated to bring our "courts of jus* tice" (?) into contempt. The difficulty of identifying the Maoris is no justification for permitting the prosecution to bo withdrawn for a money payment. —l am, etc., Fiat Justitia Ruat C<elum. Napier, July 5.