THE New Zealand Times. (PUBLISHED DAILY.) WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 16, 1895. THE MAORI JUDGE LYNCH.

New Zealand Times, Volume LVII, Issue 2641, 16 October 1895, Page 2

THE New Zealand Times. (PUBLISHED DAILY.)

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 16, 1895. THE MAORI JUDGE LYNCH.

With which are incorporated the Wellington Independent, established 1845, and the i. ' New Zealander.

It is the queerest thing possible. ,Mr Te Ao presents a petition from the most real Judge Lynch we hate ever seen in this country, “ You have let off this murderer. That is your affair. If you choose to be fools, that does not bind the Maori people. It you let that scoundrel loose amongst tta we, the Maori people, will kill him. It is our idea of justice. Therefore you must' not be astonished. The Maori people; don’t understand your civilised ments. The Maori people regwd ;U>urder as murder. Tho pakeha has chosen to put some.of our Maoris into this case as jurymen. That is quite,.right, so -far as their icaro for the Maori that he shall have justice is concerned. ' But the Maori has not had justice. The jurymea.of. Maori blood have been foolish. Wejdffie Maori people, wiU do justice for ourselves. We have always held that for murder and all crime there must bantu. Your civilisation pranks have missed this utu. Wo.tho Maori people; will supply the omission. . We give yon . fair warning. Therefore, we expect that when we kill this scoundrel you will take no further notice. You; the pakeha," have missed the point. We, the Maori people,, won’t - miss it. .The whole question of superior civilisation lies in a nutshell, Yqu, the pakeha, have got the forms. We, the- Maori people, have the real thing. Perish the forms. If you let this murderer loose among us, we, the Maori people, will kill him, and we expect that you, tho • pakeha, will acknowledge your inferiority "by winking the-other- eye. It is your own fault. But your fault must not interfere with the principles of justice, which are eternal. ,Xou may send the scoundreVto any other." country you like. That is a trouble for you, the to contend, with. You may, as an alternative, keep the scoundrel in your prison till he dies on the spot where you, the all-wise pakeha, who boast about your beautiful administration of justice, ought to have banged him. But if you do the other thing, we, the Maori people, who understand justice much better, will promptly do justice,'We, the Maori people, expect that you will say nothing more. This is our last wo^d."

The petition presented by Mr Te Ao is pot quite in those words. But those words represent the moaning of that petition with tolerable, perhaps Intolerable, accuracy. The thing is natural, It presents a difficulty, oif course, which will be a real difficulty only ’when ", the .-.man' gets btCk among his people! By that time, “ svo, the iMaori people," will,! probably hare forgotten all about it. If; they have not,, the man will probably be enabled to find his way elsewhere. The crux of the matter, however, is that the trouble has arisen from tim action of a Maori jury. It is a little startling find that - the result of applying the principle of one law for both races is the determination of the simple-hearted Maori to take the law into his own hands oh'the first opportunity, The last touch, .of humour is supplied by the 'fact;;, that • tho Maori has not the faintest idea that in goading his threat to Parliament he has done anything in the least degree wrong. It is his idea of constitutional Government that it tho Government ’.does .wrong be feels in duty bound to right that wrong. The rudimentary idea of Judge Lynch comes out in all he utters.lt only proves that his instincts a>-a right, ■ It remains to show him that the superior civilisation has a superior weight which sometimes causes friction.

The pakeha jury is just as, liable to err as tho Maori jury. For instance, a man who murdered a woman in Wellington the other day was not hanged because a pakeha jury thought very improperly that there were attenuating circumstances which reduced his crime to manslaughter. 1 Another pakeha jury feetihyed an ." expert," and sent a murderer to a tonatin asylum, to the groat scandal of the pakeha public, as the proceedings of the House of Bopre?entatireshare reccotiyehown. Butthepakeha people quite well understand that tho lawis strong in spite of it* mistakes of, administration, which are inseparable from things human. The Maori people few to learn that lesson too. The necessity is a cheek to them. That is a credit to their in* gtinots. We admire their instincts. But the Maori people have got"to' understand that it is best to accept the civilised system with all its faults; and that while accepting the faults they must help the pakeha to improve the system. A much more civilised people, the people of the United States, has gone wrong ia the direction chalked out so unoompromisiagly by Mr Te A'o’s constituents in their petition, with the result that “ we, the people of America," hang as many people every year irregularly as the administration does by judicial process. We must not therefore blame the Maori. But we _ must teach him to be superior to .the civilisation of the great American Republic.

THE CHESIIS CASE. No one ought to be taken by surprise at the decision of the Court of Appeal, for it was apparent to anyone who looked into the Act after it was passed that the power of the measure was not equal to the good will of its promoters. There was in their procedure a little more zeal than discretion. To say that the former quality remains unimpaired, as everyone who knows Mr Mills is quite well aware, is only another way of saying that there will be another Bill presently to supplement the lack of discretion which has caused the Act passed the other day to fail. The late period at which the session has arrived, together with the tottering uncertainty of the day of prorogation, ought to forbid Mr Mills and his friends to hope for success with any Bill they may devise this side or Christmas. If they will be guided by good advice they will devote the first instalment of their new discretion to postponing their effoit till next year. It has been said that the deplorable results of the Dean agitation must react on the Cliemis case. That is simple nonsense. It would not be that if the Cliemis case depended on popular agitation. But it has got out of that groove. It has got an Act on the Statute Book, that Act has proved to be ineffectual, but the principle has been established that the casoshall have a review of some kind. It is too late to reverse that. Logically the friends of Chemia, or, if they prefer it, the friends of justice, have established their right to amend their Act. The only question is as to the time. Their best time will be next year.