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New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4154, 14 July 1874, Page 2

It is not with any pleasure that we refer to the case of Macdonald, which was finally disposed of yesterday, so far as the Courts of the Colony are concerned. Tho sentence was as light as the law allowed. Taking the case in the purely judicial aspect in which it was viewed by the Judge—and properly viewed—the offence committed by the prisoner was a very heinous one. Yet there is no doubt that a common offender, or one who desired to escape from the serious responsibilities of his position through any loop-hole, would have put in a plea which would at least have enabled counsel to plead in his defence, to have put in witnesses to give a favorable aspect to tho case, and to have palliated a crime the commission of which could not be denied. But Macdonald would not equivocate with the facts of the affair to escape the full measure of punishment which he knew was attachable to the act which he had committed. He stopped Her Majesty's mail from crossing a certain boundary line—hot, like a New South Wales bushranger, that he wished to rob the letterbags, but from a totally different motive. He wounded a horse—not because it was the property of a certain mail contractor, but because he erroneously conceived, in the wrongness of an imperfectly trained Celtic mind, that a warning of an impressive kind would bring about a settlement of certain claims or disputes which, real or imaginary, must have appeared to him to have the longevity of a Chancery suit about them. The samo motive prompted him on at least one previous occasion to violate the law, to undergo a trial, and endure the penalty. That sacrifice, however, was insufficient to bring about the object for which it was made ; and no doubt tho fact led up to this greatly more rash offence to which ho pleaded guilty. We take but little note of tho various statements and explanations of his own feelings which tho prisoner made when called upon to plead, and when in a great measure—and in saying so we do not reflect in tho most distant manner upon Mr. Travers he was left to be his own lawyer. Tho coach was about, for the first timo, to carry Her Majesty's mails upon a newly constructed road. That piece of work had been done by the Government, and no objection appears to have been made to its construction by the Natives whose land it traversed, who have hitherto accepted Macdonald as their mouthpiece and representative in their communications with' the Government, upon whom they prefer claims which may or may not be well founded. They were, indeed, the contractors or makers of the road. But the actual passage of tho mails, for the first timo, across the bridge which led into the Maori territory —across a turning-point, as it were, in the history of the disputed claims—seems to have somewhat alarmed the Native owners of tho soil, and it is not at all surprising that the wrongheaded Gael who felt himself entrusted with the care of the Maori cause should have felt himself called upon to guard the pass. There is nothing in Macdonald's explanations and statements since the event to induce us to vary the opinion wo formed at the timo. It is apparent that tho excitement of the occasion, and tho growing conviction as the hour drew near that he was expected to do something decisive to protect what he and his Maori friends believed to be his and their interests, induced him to seek for a little "Dutch courage."- An idea seems to have been floating in his mind that if lie was on board the coach which first passed the boundary line his rights and those of his Native friends would be asserted. But a seat was denied to him. To have suffered the coach to proceed without him, he no doubt thought, would have been togiveupallforwhichhohadbeen contending, for which he had violated the laws, and had suffered punishment. But up to that period, whatever his assertions now may be, he had not contemplated resort to physical' force. It would have been easy for him to havo obtained tho help of the Natives to block tho road effectually, as is said to havo been done since, by the cutting of a deep trench—an impassable gulf to the mail coach. He did not take that course. If we have read the story of the affair correctly, Macdonald could readily have found a sufficient number of friends to prevent the vehiclo from leaving the inn-door to attempt to cross the bridge—the Rubicon in this dispute. But ho did not call upon tho Natives to implicate themselves in such a transaction. A very small effort of physical force would have been sufficient to turn back the mail; for tho contractor required but.littlo inoro than a tap on the shoulder to persuade him to desist from persevering with the effort to carry tho mail over the tapued territory. Macdonald had not oven come armed to the affray. He had no weapon of _ any kind in his possession. Ho had neither I he traditional broadsword, nor tho pistol, nor tho dirk, nor tho skean-dhu, which the Macdonalds wore wont to carry in their frays and forays. When his prido was stung by being refused a seat in a

coach which, besides the mails, carried little more than fodder for the contractor's horses, he was not able to draw a revolver to assert a right; but found, almost by chance, a single-barrelled gun in the bed-room, of the landlord, loaded with shot, and with this x>ne charge he wounded one of the leaders, and without another ounce of lead in any shape in his possession he turned back Her Majesty's mails. Even then he disowned any hostility to the contractor, or a desire to injure a human being. The statements which have been attributed to him since, and which, perhaps, he was not unwilling to allow to be credited to him, as to the greater satisfaction it would have been to him to have had a better victim than a horse —and, after all, the horse did not die—we may set down to another feeling altogether than that which animated Macdonald at the time when the offence was committed. That the prisoner contemplated any more serious crime than the assertion of a right, or the taking of a step which should force on the consideration if not the settlement of matters long in dispute between him and his people and the Government, we do not believe ; and we are convinced that the resort to firearms was a sudden impulse, whatever the infatuated individual who used a stolen gun to execute a hasty resolve may now in a spirit of pride say to the contrarv.

The offence committed, however—whatever the motive—there was but one course left for the Government. It was imperative, for the maintenance of law and order, that the offender should bo brought to justice. It is to the credit of Macdonald that he made no attempt to escape from the consequences of his deed; and of the Natives, for whom he is supposed to have acted, that they placed no obstacle whatever in the way of the running of the Queen's warrant. The accused at once accompanied the officers sdnt to arrest him, and did not attempt to escape from his bail. He undoubtedly looked beyond the only view of the case which the Supreme Court could take. By his surrender, his trial, and sentence, the law has been vindicated ; and in their quiet submission to the law in this case—for we place little reliance on private telegrams received yesterday—the Natives who have for years accepted Macdonald as their "guide, philosopher, and friend," have given a strong jwoof of their desire to live under the law, and resxJect the authority of the powers that be. It should now be the business of the Government, however, to inquire into the motive of the crime. If there are matters unsettled between the people whom Macdonald represents and the Government, and if the consideration of them has been unreasonably and irritatingly procrastinated, they should now be taken in hand, and as promptly disposed of as circumstances permit. If these grievances are sub-, stantiated, some excuse may be found for the rash and criminal act of Macdonald ; and in such an event, it can scarcely be doubted, the full penalty imposed on the prisoner will not be insisted upon. The vindication of the law was the first necessity in the case. That having been accomplished, it will not be unsatisfactory if the clemency of the Crown should be exercised, seeing that, however rash and wild the act of which Macdonald has been guilty, there was little of a selfserving purpose in it. He " belled the cat," but should not be too severely dealt with for his rashness.

We cannot leave the subject without a word as to His Honor Judge Johnston's address to the prisoner in passing sentence upon him. The case has no doubt given His Honor considerable difficulty. Had a simple plea of "not guilty" been entered, and the usual course of leading evidence and commenting upon it been taken, His Honor's duty would have been a very easy one. With such a prisoner, and such a plea, and such a case, the position of the Judge was not a pleasant ono. But why the half-apologetic tone in which the prisoner was addressed ? The example now made of Macdonald is robbed of half its weight by the terms in which the judgment of the Court was conveyed. It was scarcely necessary, in the hearing of the case, that the prisoner should have been led on, unintentionally on the part of the Bench, no doubt, to explain the feelings under which he acted —or rather under which he supposed, after the event, that he had acted ; or, in the last stage of the case, to have touched upon other than tho plain aspects of the case as they wore before the Court, sitting in its criminal jurisdiction. What view the Ministry may tako of it, after tho motives which induced the crime have been thoroughly examined, it was not necessary to discuss between the Bench and tho dock , in the case of a prisoner tried for a purely statutory offence.