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Lyttelton Times, Volume LXII, Issue 7386, 31 October 1884, Page 4

The Libby case presents some features of interest to the unbiassed observer. We have often heard that on board the ships of the United States mercantile marine—a thing (perhaps happily) growing small by degrees and beautifully less—it is the playful custom for officers to enforce their arguments upon their men with belaying pins, knuckle dusters, shooting irons, or any instrument of gentle persuasion that may be found handy. These are, may be, sea stories, having a certain proportion perhaps of “yarns," which are not intended to be heard beyond the forecastle, or believed anywhere. In our own experience, we do remember a case which is quite beyond doubt. It was the case of a brutal Yankee master, whose name we have forgotten, who was seconded in his malpractices by a still more brutal mate named Dodd. Mr Dodd and his congenial master had amused themselves for a long period of their voyage from some Atlantic port to Dunedin at the expense of a poor wretch who, for his sins, no doubt, had boon condemned to sail under their respectable orders. Mr Green, that being the sinner’s name, having caught the attention of the master and mate, who of course were, like all good people, “ death on sinners," speedily realised that, under Mr Dodd and his captain, the stories he may have heard about American discipline were more than correct. Poor Green was beaten and cuffed, tied up and belaboured, mastheaded, and made to suffer the maritime equivalent for being “rid on a rail. There came a day at last, no doubt, when Mr Green was tired of these attentions, flourishing so thick under a flag which is the proud emblem of Liberty, defended by the bird of Jove and protected by his thunderous lightning, There also came a day when Mr Dodd got tired of the perpetual re-appearance of Mr Green. So he ordered Mr Green to stand on a boat skidd. Presently Mr Green committed the flagrant doliction of holding on to a rope to prevent himself from being lurched overboard by the ship’s lively motion. Mr Dodd promptly came to tho conclusion that “the service was going to the Devil," jumped up alongside of the criminal, and belaboured his offending hands with a belaying pin until they loosed their hold. Mr Green thereupon went overboard, and “ the subsequent proceedings interested him no more," Not so with a keen Colonial public and a Government determined to uphold tho principles of natural justice. The subsequent proceedings had this interest for them, that they were very anxious that Mr Dodd should be hanged. But techniealities came to the fore, and Mr Dodd was released. How many men he has since murdered in the legitimate exercise of his calling there is no evidence to determine. Tho horrors in Dodd's ease are hot altogether re-called by the case of tho Libby. But wo are made to think of them. For instance, M'Carthy swore that for a small error, if it was an error at all, ho was struck with a belaying pin, considerably ill-used, driven below, and goaded to violence

in self-defence. Why wa» no evidence produced against this statement ? It is, of course, possible that the master was acting by the advice of his solicitor, who took a line which required no evidence. Indeed, there is documentary evidence to the effect that 'McCarthy is rather an objectionall* jKirson. not the Captain should have remembered that if the Colonial Courts have no jurisdiction. Colonial public opinion has a right to form its own conclusions. Ho cannot complain. therefore, if the public comes to the conclusion that no evidence was offered against M'Carthy’s statement of ill-treatment, because there was none to offer. Whatever may Ist the case ;is to the provocation received < by M’Carlhy and there is sworn testimony of disgraceful, unlawful, nnjusttfiahlo violence—-there is no doubt as to the nature of the treatment received by M’Carthy after he was secured and confined. That treatment is the most barbarous, abominable, villainous and inhuman that it has been our painful duty to comment upon during many years of observation of many kinds of confinement. The fact that M'Oarthy is at this moment unable to walk, is sufficient to brand the treatment he received as the worst on record. It. of course, constitutes a most serious offence. The curious thing about this case is that whereas our law has cognisance to a certain extent over the offence charged against the man, it has none whatever over the offence charged against the master. If that be the state of the law—and the Magistrates have decided that it is so—the sooner that a Jaw so onesided, so fundamentally unjust, ceases to disgrace our Statute Book the bettor. . The extent to which the law has cognisance, as decided in the Lyttelton Besident Magistrate’s Court, makes it still more disgraceful to our Statute Book. There is power to send the man home to bo tried in his own countiy, or the country of bis ship. There is no power to send any witnesses. The only witnesses likely to go are the witnesses who are interested in prosecuting. It follows that, by our law, the door is opened to infamous prosecutions, infamously supported, and ending in infamous injustice. We do not express any opinion of what is or is not likely to take place when the captain and the mate are alone before the United States Court with the man whom it is probable they drove to violence, and whom it is certain they grievously injured by their appaliug system of confinement. The man will then be recovered; his thriving appearance will proclaim the improbability of his story, unsupported as it will be by evidence. Whatever may happen in this case in the way of swearing, it is obvious that our law is arranged so as to encourage foreign shipmasters to trump up charges against any seamen they may happen, for any of the numerous reasons that influence bad motives, to want to bring to disgrace. This blot ought to be removed from the Statute Book before the rising of Parliament.