OUR WELLINGTON LETTER.

Marlborough Express, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 283, 27 November 1905, Page 1

OUR WELLINGTON LETTER.

[riiOM OUK COKBESPONDENT.]

WELLINGTON, Nov. 25. Vre have had tho shortest murder trial on record. After a fair hearing and every latitude allowed tho unfortunate man, Lionel Torry yras found guilty ol: the murder of x)w Chinprann Kmn Yung, and duly .sentcr.cod to doKti.i. No other ivsult. was possible. Ho claimed the right to sot a.sicie ths kw which guarantees to all alike protection to life under the rule of the King of this realm. So far from denying his crime lie attempted to justify it, and he took every care to have the crime sheeted home to him in the most conclusive possible way. This was his line, boiled down to its absolute bedrock:—(l) It is impossible for the laws

of the people of one race to benefici-

ally control and govern those of another; (2) therefore it must necessarily ho unlawful for people of two or more distinct races to dwell together in the same country; (3) therefore si Chinaman being a raco alien is not a man within the meaning of the statute made and provided for the protection of life, and may be put to death. On■ this hypothesis Terry killed the Chinaman for the purpose of drawing attention to the evil of allowing Chinamen to dwell in this country. Terry's plea substituted anarchy for law. It was of course rejected. He was therefore found guilty of the murder of the Chinaman, and sentenced to death. The law was maintained against the license of individual opinion. The street is thoroughly in accord with the finding of the jury. The street is further of the opinion that Terry is not on the same plane as the ordinary anarchist, but that on the contrary he is not sane. Hence the street agrees with the jury in its recommendation to mercy. It agrees with the "Times' therefore that it would be an outrage to hang the man, and unsafe to give him his liberty. There are those who think, and they are not irresponsible people at all, but pei sons capable of forming a fair judgment on men and things, that the recommendation of mercy not being supported by evidence, ought to be disregarded by the Executive,'and the man duly hanged. There is, they insist, the dictum of a famous English Judge —Hawkins (C. J.) —a dictum invariably laid down by him to juries in cases of alleged mental disturbance, that nothing should guide them to the conclusion of lack of knowledge of responsibility, that may be done by the accused person, but that every j such conclusion ought to be supported by outside testimony. The rule is for j obvious reasons good. But there may be cases of exception. In this one, for example, there was no one to put forward any plea for the accused person; who, in fact, specially insisted that he was not mad in any sense, and could not be by reason of any accident inasmuch as he had never suffered from accident likely to affect the balance of his brain. To confine one's self in this case would be to take a madman at his word. The large auditory did not have much difficulty in coming to the conclusion that the man was not, at all events on this subject, responsible for his actions, ft'was not alone the matter of his statement which in view of the actual state of things in the country was without any kind of shadow of excuse except such as might be put forward by a highly inconsequential brain, but there was that in tho air and demeanour of the man which left little doubt of his state of

Hbo-rration. Truo, he was calm and collected; but the'shiftiness of his eye and the mobility, weak to a degree, of his lips, together with the inconsequential character of the cross-exami-nation of the witnesses—these were all signs which the jury had before them, and had every right to interpret for themselves. They did not decide for the saving " craze :> because the ' man talked anarchism, or, as has been suggested, because his logic was bad ; but because he gave signs of mental aberration. A prominent authority on the street declared that he had watched the trial from start to finish, and had come to the conclusion that for all his calmness and gentleness of self-posses-sion of which the newspapers who have overdone the case talked, he would object to walk down a lonely road with Terry if he had offended him by opposing argument on any subject he might have at heart. When he looked at Mr Myers during the reading of his defence as he alluded to him as " the Hebrew" it was a sudden glare of most unwholesome order.

Tlie jury were very nearly, I am informed on the best authority—none of themselves—bringing in a verdict of guilty without any qualification whatever, determined in fact to take the man at his own valuation. But better counsels prevailed^ chiefly thanks to the retailing of stories about the vagaries of persons in lunatic asylums, which looked often like sanity until the particular weakness was touched upon. Such stories are familiar in everyone's experience, but to have them trotted out in a jury box on the solemn occasion of a murder trial is something new. Terry sleeps well, eats well, does everything, even to conversing affably with the warders, well, and the fact is duly chronicled, from day to day. Speculations are made on every hand as to his feelings about himself about the failure to rouse public opinion, and so forth. But as it is unprofitable to dwell on the feelings of a madman, I refrain from detail.

A more gleasant subject of gossip is tho arrival oi: the Union Company's turbine steamer, the Maheno. It was a sight to see at the wharf, with her two funnels and her shapely lines, telling of great .speed, and the beaiitiful up-to-dateness of all the visible irachinory. But when one went on board the feeling of satisfaction was specially great. In everything the boat is exactly what one expects y first-class boat to be. A first-class boat is one of those that refuses to let any of the Kingrs subjects travel in any other way than that to which millionaires and noblemen and membcic of the most swell clubs are accustomed to live. Farewell the modest chop; adieu the familiar tender- juicy joint and tho floury potato; avaunt the modest plainness of the family meal. Still more farewells to the neat furniture of the frugal citizen's home, lay homely bath and his ideas of ordinary comfort. On board tliat huht he must have dinners of courses, baths ot marble or the nearest pqiinlen*. He must lounge on the settee of luxury and be pampered in the lounging chair of opulence; he must talk of the vintages of other days, aad discard his briar for the fantastic strength of the costly Havanna. A!! this it pays the shipowner to give him at reasonable cost, and the only thing plain about the thing is the plainness of his duty.to live up to his surroundings. Boredom i;i gilded halls—that is a fi.iiSt-class liner. The Aiaheuo is quite up to high-water mark in evei-y essential particular of this boring comfort. When you want to see the turbine, you are shown a case, and you take all the rest on trust, including the fact that the turbine, if it is in some respects defftctive, has at all events come to stay. Of course there was a sumptuous . lunch and sumptuous speeches, and there were many retrospects very proper to the occasion. Of those the most interesting referred to was to the old days of the sailing craft—the brigantines, as the old salts of other days call them now, with tender reminiscence. Standing in the shadow of the big Maheno, sumptuous and speedy, of a speed of 17 knots, one heard "of the schooners which used to carry the people and the goods in the early days, extending their voyages to Melbourne on the one side and Sydney in the other. The irregular--ity and the wrecks woro the main features ,apparently, so far as may be judged by the talk of these old salts. I remember myself to have heard the late Mr McAndrew tell of his journey to Auckland from Dunedin via Sydney to attend to his Parliamentary duties. Canterbury people will recollect the wreck of the schooner that carried one of the Deans brothers up ta Wellington and drowned him, with many others, on Barrett's reef in the, grey of a Southerly morning. "Wellingtonians never will forget the loss of the schooner on the same reef with that band of colonists on board who had given up all hope of a successful struggle against Maoris and earthquakes, and were bound for the New bouth Wales capital j and their re-

turn, sadder, wiser men, and destined to be richer.

! I)i those days it was bub towards their close that a smart schooner sailed tlie treacherous seas under the command of that energetic colonist, Mr Thomson, of the firm afterwards of Goates and Co., of Christchnrch, jewellers, oi' Colombo Street. An ideal sHi'ler ho was, and a successful, making many voyages to Melbourne and S\dney and the various coast pcity without: mishap and with much profit, until the advance of the steam fleets drove him out. it was a good day for him, as L have heard. Now, as his boat was not a bit safer or more seaworthy than any of the others, so many of whom came to grief, one won ders what was the secret of his better fate. It lay in the character of the man, not in luck at all. Thompson was a man who was always undergoing an examination to fit him for the duties of his calling. Every day it was his custom to think out situations of difficulty and danger, sudden emergencies, of storm, squal, currant and rock, fog, blizzard and calm. And from these examinations he never rose without having formulated a clear idea of what ho would do instantly in each case, down to the very details of the ropes to be handled in the operation . He became afterwards member for the district, Mayor of the city ,head of the Freemasons, and the well-known and popular citizen of Christchurch; but the foundation of liis fortune and the mainspring of his character were both found ou board that .schooner he sailed so well and .--o thoughtfully in the days when the country was young. We are excited pleasantly by the prospect of the near approach of the Opposition campaigners. Mr Massey having already spoken up in the city o? Auckland, will, it is supposed, take heart of grace and stump the country His merry men are to meet him, and already John Duthie has left his district to his friends and has started up north to meet his chief and fight the common enemy on some witching platform. It is a touching instance of fidelity to the salt. In truth the champions of the Opposition, who are hard pressed, would be better without the help of the headstrong member for Wellington, and they know it. With Mr Massey it is different, perhaps, though there is not much reason to feel elated over his Auckland opening. It was a repetition of all the points of a line which never has arrived. Th.« people who say they are pleased would say anything.