THE New Zealand Times (PUBLISHED DAILY). SATURDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1889. MERELY JUSTICE

New Zealand Times, Volume LI, Issue 8857, 7 December 1889, Page 4

THE New Zealand Times (PUBLISHED DAILY).

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1889.

MERELY JUSTICE

With which are incorporated _ (he We'-lingtvt Independent , ettahlished 1843. and the Nev Zealander.

Eecent proceedings in criminal law have brough t prominently forward a larger crop than usual

of cases of criminal assaults upon women and children. This has been apparent pretty well through the Colony* andhere in Wellington dealing with such cases has much exercised both Judge and jury. Justice seems to have gone halting. Actuated by the best of intentions it has not, somehow, compassed what unqueation-

abl j was aimed at—equitable adjudication. There was a difficulty in the way of justly appraising the gravamen of the cases. The crimes, as defined by the law, were not exactly committed, but very near it, while there was one that no one but the Judge appeared inclined to regard as a crime at all, but simply as a sort of lark. For instance, if a maid should be met by a man on a lonely road, and he rudely kisses her and pulls her about, it is not such a very serious matter after all. He was a fool for his pains, but only committed a common assault. And so with the other offences of the kind dealt with at this recent criminal assize in Wei Hngton. There was not enough of one of them, but rather too much of the other. The last we commented on in an article on Thursday, and as for the other and the so-termed common assault case, where the man met the maiden, it seems to us that the jury quite under-estimated the gravity cf both of them. We can sympathise with juries entrusted with delicate cases of the kind, for it is a facr, and a sad one, that men occasionally have to be protected from the wiles and machiua tions of women. Men’s lives and liberties have been imperilled too often by the shameless intriguing of the other sex, and therefore Justice has to be very cautious indeed how it entertains ex ■parte statements by women against men. Too much discrimination cannot be exercised. Bat when reasonably conclusive evidence is adduced of unprovoked assault by man on woman, why then, we say Justice ought to make an example of him pour encourager les autres. A man may cast sheep’s eyes on a woman, but lie may not make a brute of himself by laying hands upon her with criminal intent. What constitutes criminal intentis a knotty problem that has been made the most of time and again by clever and unscrupulous advocates, and many a scoundrel has escaped condign punishment thereby. It strikes us that criminal intent should be associated with every assault made by a man upon a woman with whom he is not acquainted. A strange man impelled by the devil within him is not at all likely to • lay hands upon a woman in a lonely place to merely kiss her—his intent is of far deeper meaning than that; and to regard it as nothing more wou’d be a wilful disregarding of extreme probabilities. We will argue upon this, the least pronounced of the several gradations of the offence known as assaults upon females. The woman is grossly insulted; her modesty is outraged; she is mentally as well as physically shocked, and her confidence in the safety of the Queen’s highway is altogether upset. She cries to the law for redress, the law makes light of it; it’s only kissing a girl, says the jury, and an insignificant punishment is inflicted. Now, what we want to arrive at is a remedy make the Queen’s highway, and all by-ways as well, absolutely safe to woman. It is said that a woman in the United States may travel from one end of the republic to the other without incurring the slightest risk of molestation, and that is a condition that ought to prevail in every country in the world claiming to be civilised. If a man puts his hand upon a woman with evil intent, a woman he has no right to touch and who has not given him the slightest encouragement, her helplessness being taken advantage of, why then we say the punishment meted out to that man should be severe enough to make him subject to shiverings during the rest of his natural life “ Henceforth the white hand of a lady, fever him, let him shake to look on it.” Although that man did not compass the excess of villainy be meditated, yet he meant to, and should be treated almost as severely as if he had gained his end. Now, if that phase of the offence were so punished we mav he sure that criminal assaults upon women would be very seldom heard of indeed. The country, from end to end, would be free to her; she would be safe wherever she went, It would be enough that she had been severely maltreated, as we have above defined, to ensure condign punishment. And offences against children come within a category for which even less mercy may be shown. There is no excuse whatever for a man meddling with a child, not even consent, and if she is a poor innocent, the victim of outrage, what a frightful crime the brute commits! Is it not time that the law was amended so as to compel the sharpest retribution for such wretches, and until it is, is,it not the duty of the Bench to stretch the law as it stands, in order to sheet home as much punishment as possible to them ? This is an interrogatory that administrators of the law. may well ponder over.

The news we publish this EMUf bey. morning from Zanzibar is tinged with melancholy sadness. Emin Bey, the brave governor of the Equatorial Provinces of Egypt, after passing through a terrible time of privation away in Central Africa, surrounded by savage foes, deprived of medicines, arms and ammunition, exposed to all the dangers of a . deadly climate, has been brought back safely to civilisation by H. M. Stanley, only to meet with a serious accident, which may probably prove fatal. Being near sighted, he stepped through on open window of the house in which he was staying in the commercial town of Bagamayo, one of the coastal settlements of the Province of Zanzibar, and fractured his skull. It is to be hoped that later news will tell us of his recovery, for Emin Bey is one of those few men the world cannot very well spare. Although he is better known of, late to newspaper readers by his Egyptian title of Emin Pasha or Bey, his real name is Eduard Schnetzier, a native of Oppein, in Silesia, Austria, and born 28th March, 1840, of Protestant parents. He entered

the medical profession, and took his degree in Berlin in 1864, shortly afterward travelling through Turkey, Armenia, Syria, and Arabia. In 1876 he joined the Egyptian army as surgeon, with the title of Dr Emin Elfendi, and in thatcapacity was sent to Khartoum. In 1878, when General Gordon was Governor of the Soudan, Emin was appointed Governor of the Equatorial Provinces of Egypt, the lake regions of what was once the Egyptian Soudan. At the time of the Mahdist rising he was cut off from the civilised world, but at his chief station —at Wadelai, on the Lake Albert Nyanza—he was able to keep together a garrison sufficient to hold h s provinces, although he ran short of medicines, arms, and ammunition. In consequence of his appeal for help a relief expedition was sent out in January, 1887. This expedition was organised by Mr Mackinnon, of Baliwakiil, and the Egyptian Government subscribed LIO,OOO toward it. The command of the party was given to Mr H. M. Stanley by the Egyptian Government, who took with him Major Barttelot (who was afterward assassinated by one of his followers) and a force of several hundred Zanzibari and Soudanese soldiers and carriers. Stanley made his way up the Congo and then up its great tributary, the Aruwhimi. It was on June 3, 1887, that Stanley left his camp on the Aruwhimi, and it was not until April, 1889, that any authentic news of him was received. He had reached Druri, on the southeastern shore of Lake Victoria Nyanza on June 12th, 1888, and at Unyno, on the opposite shore of the lake, he met Emin Bey. He then retraced his footsteps to the camp at Aruwhimi, which he reached on August 17th, 1888. After a brief rest he started on September 4th to rejoin Emin Bey atUruri. Since then messages have re died the Zanzibar coast announcing his desperate fights with the Mali dists, the evacuation of the Wadelai country, and the progress of the combined forces of Stanley and Emin Bey toward the Zanzibar coast. Then the whole world a few days ago was delighted to learn that these two brave men had passed safely through their countless dangers and had reached civilisation, and now comes a sad finale to the successful issue of such an adventurous journey. The whole world hopes that Emin Bey may yet live.