MEIKLE'S CLAIMS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1847, 31 July 1907, Page 47

MEIKLE'S CLAIMS.

ERASURE OF PRISON RECORD. LEGISLATION PROMISED. A SPECIAL TRIBUNAL. Sir Joseph Ward on Thursday for an hour and a half listened to the views of the Meikle Committee on the report of, the Royal Commission which was set up by the Government to recommend what should be done in the case. Mr Jameson, chairman of, the committee, said no political motive actuated them in the action they had taken. They urged (1) the removal of Meikle’s name from the prison records of the colony; (2) compensation for the loss he had suffered. Adolf Beck had got <£sooo from the British Government; Meikle would not be receiving too much if he got <£15,000. Mr A. R. Atkinson, speaking for threequarters of an hour, not as counsel but as a member of the .public, pointed out that nearly two years had elapsed since the appointment of the Meikle Commission, and nearly twenty years since Meikle’s conviction was recorded. The colony could not afford to wait any longer before some finality was reached in this case. Since the report of the Commission had been made there had been no agitation; the committee had succeeded in keeping Mr Meikle labouring on the wharf instead of talking at street corners. The report of the Royal Commission the committee regarded as weak, wordy, and evasive, and it had only increased public sympathy for the man. There must be some Parliamentary Committee set up to fill up the omissions which the Commission had been set up to determine, yet the Commission had found enough to entitle Meikle to all that he ever asked for. His right to compensation was never denied until his case came before the Commission.

Mr John Hutcheson said they feared a recrudescence of the agitation unless this ghost was laid. They were entitled to hear without any doubt the minds of the Government as to what the Commission's report did not say. Mr William McLean regarded the Commission's report as a “nasty, spiteful report.'' Sir Joseph Ward thought that one of the fine sides of nature was exeru©lified in the action of the committee in working on behalf of a man whom they considered had been unduly sent to prison. Legislation was now in hand, to give effect to the Commission's recommendations to delete from the prison records Meikle's conviction. The compensation that should be awarded to him was a somewhat difficult matter. That was now being gone into by Cabinet, and at the present moment he could not tell what the decision of the Government would be. There was in some respects an indefiniteness upon points in the Commission's report that had made the question very embarrassing for the Government, as well as for the committee. And in saying this he did not for _ a moment reflect upon the gentlemen who sat upon that Commission. He thought a decision would be arrived at within the next fortnight. He thought the Government would have to refer part of this matter to a Committee of Parliament, or to some tribunal, to settle aspects of the question upon which Ministers had not yet determined, and if that course was agreed to, this interest in the Meikle case which had gone on for so long would be settled. The whole matter would be gone into impartially, with a view to arriving at what was just.