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Lyttelton Times, Volume LI, Issue 5600, 5 February 1879, Page 4

The story of tho brutish savage, M'Grath, is lamentably instructive. It shows the depths to which human nature is sometimes capable of desoending. For the honour of human nature we hope that this individual is not representative. It would indeed be a teirible thing if there was a class like him absolutely dead to every feeling of natural affection, ignorant of common decency, reckless of honour, duty, principle, even devoid of tho good instincts which the very brute creation shares with man. His loathsome story which is set out in our Magisterial column, is perfect in its revolting hideousness. To be a father seems, in the eyes of this man, nothing but a means of enlarging tho scope of his cruelties and mischiefs. He stands before the public marked, quoted, and signed as a fit recruiting instrument for the gaol and the brothel. Cruel and overbearing to his helpless offspring, he faces the superior force: of the police Sf at rrT lth^ mginßß and Prevaricadefence ho set up was of him Wh ?r have been expected it absolutely Tht if 7“ ***** Relevant. Ihe and front of his offending hQ forcod hia a girl of tender years, to live alone in a howling wilderness, a prey to mortal terrors and

in danger of falling a victim to the unholy passion of any scoundrel that might wander into that desolate region. He said, untruthfully, that he had not left her to suffer hunger and cold, in solitude, misery, and dirt. That the child was hungry, unsheltered, insufficiently clad, and almost wholly neglected, was amply proved in Court. These things were gross cruelties, showing the savagery of the inhuman father’s nature. But they were only aggravations of the original and more grievous wrong of sending the child into the wilderness alone and unprotected. There ia no punishment for such a man, unless the punishment of being compelled to support his child lor two years is a punishment. A sordid wretch who exposes his child to death and worse, ill-treating her with callous cruelty in order that he may scrape together a few miserable shillings, the fruits of her labour, is certainly the only creature that can feel this to be a punishment. Though inaccessible to the promptings of paternal affection, he is quite likely to feel the regrets of avarice. But these regrets will not enable him to realise the enormity of the crime of which he has been guilty. This is a crime of commission against the feeble and defenceless, and of omission to shelter and train the soul committed to his keeping. Tet it is a crime which the. law recks not much of. If he had committed the petty pilfering theft of a few rotten apples, the law would have promptly interfered to punish the scandalous invasion of the sacred rights of property. If he had taken a ragged bank-note from the pocket of the robust companion of a drunken debauch, the strictly guarded interests of property would have sent him to prison for a term of years. As he has only committed a crime against a child, for which the cat-o’-nine tails would be a light punishment, he is merely condemned to do his duty.