Hawke's Bay Herald MONDAY, JUNE 23, 1879. THE RECENT PERJURY CHARGE.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 5415, 23 June 1879, Page 2

Hawke's Bay Herald MONDAY, JUNE 23, 1879. THE RECENT PERJURY CHARGE.

While the numerous friends of Mr Kinross will be heartily gratified at the dismissal of the charge of perjury recently preferred against him,, we <San readily conceive that he may not be altogether pleased at* the summary ending of the investigation. ' By the dismissal of the case before, flatnesses, for the defence could be called Mr Kinross has been deprived of the opportunity of rebutting the evidence brought forward by the prosecution, and, though a load of anxiety and uncertainty may have been lifted from his mind, it can hardly be satisfactory to him that only, one side has been heard, and that in future those opposed to him may repeat to his disparagement the evidence given against him. on oath, but which could not, by the turn events h&ve taken, be disproved on'oatk .TJieJ^mmdiation " party will well knW ;t ncsr*to make capital of the peculiar circum stances connected with the ehai^ge. As we read the brief telegram announcing the conclusion of the case, it has been dismissed nominally upon a technical pomt — the inability of Mr Rees to produce Avitnesses to prove that Mr Kinross's evidence before a Parliamentary Committee ill 1.87.1 ,was given on oath. •. Mr ICinros^enimies will not be slow to seize upon this fact, and to represent that it was this legal difficulty which prevented them from carrying the charge to its legitimate conclusion. There ai-e, however, circumstances which lead one to believe that the prosecution were quite con* tent to ■ have the case end where it did, without a full and complete investigation. Mr Kees, it is true, made several attempts to obtain the necessary evidence, but' he was prevented from doing so by the rules of Parliament. This difficulty was, however, seen from the first, and Mr Rees then announced that if he were unable to place the necessary witnesses in the box when he was ready for them, he would meet the difficulty by prolonging the case for the prosecution until Parliament met. It would not have been a very hard task for one of Mr Rees' power of talking against time to do this. Mr Mansford, the Wellington Resident Magistrate, is overwhelmed with business from his own disteict, which must take precedence of a case remitted from elsewhere. He could not possibly have devoted more than one, or, at most, two days each week to the hearing of this particular charge, and as Parliament meets on the 11th of next month, there would have been very few days to " fill-up," and one or two additional witnesses, examined leisurely, would have provided the necessary material. There was also plenty of time to get the witnesses to Wellington. The neglect to carry Mr Rees's threat into execution may mean nothing ; but the prosecution must not be surprised if it is . construed to mean that they were not unwilling to let the charge drop, at any rate for the present. There is another point which lends confirmation to this view. Mr Mansford, according to the reports in the Wellington papers, more than once declared that, even were the " missing link " supplied, he should not commit Mr Kinross for trial, as he did not consider that the evidence given showed even a prima facie case. The evidence of the clerk of the Legislative Council could have proved only that Mr Kinross did or did not give evidence on oath, and could not have disproved the truth of that evidence. On the last occasion when witnesses were examined Mr Mansford again intimated that he did not consider a prima facie case made out, and as the prosecution failed to produce further direct evidence, the assumption that they despaired of bringing the charge home to Mr Kinross, and were therefore willing that it should drop, is natural and reasonable. Mr Mansford's expression of opinion will, if it has no other efiecfc, be highly gratifying to Mr Kinross and to his friends, for though the case was nominally dismissed because of a technical difficulty, the statement of the presiding Resident Magistrate shows that he was prepared to dismiss the charge upon its merits, without even calling upon Mr Kinross for his defence. Mr Mansford is one of the clearest-headed of our colonial magistrates ; he has lived in a part of the colony little affected by the disputes as to title between the natives and Europeans ; he is not given to making light assertions from the bench ; and all these things give weight to his remark when he says that he does not consider even a prima facie case made out. Thus, though Mr Kinross stands in much the same ambiguous positon as a prisoner in Scotland, when a verdict of "Not proven" is returned, he has this consolation — that the verdict would, but for an accident of law, have been one of full acquittal.