A SALUTARY SENTENCE.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLII, Issue 128, 1 June 1908, Page 4

A SALUTARY SENTENCE.

Recently the press of the Dominion, with but few exceptions, commented upon the.iiiadeqitate punishment, by fines, of men1 'of means at Palmerston North, who were guilty of serious assaults upon their fellowmen. The healthy public opinion created by the press criticisms upon that occasion is apparent in the decision of another of our Judges recently^ at Auckland. In the Palmerston North cases, it will be remembered, two men were fined, one for stabbing a constable, and the other for savagely beating another man over the head with a hunting crop. The Auckland case was one in which the offender rode into a meeting of the Salvation Army at a street corner, and brutally beat over the head one who attempted to check him. For this display of savagery lie is now ordered to undergo a sentence of three years' imprisonment with hard labour. This is a much more salutary sentence than inflicting a mere money fine upon a man well able to pay. it, and who thus goes free, practically without punishment at all, for an offence quite as bad as the _ one for which another man is now in gaol. While the action of the Judge in the latter case must be aa>p|auded, the mistaken leniency of his brother Judge in the other instances cannot be too sternly deprecated.