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Oamaru Mail, Volume XVI, Issue 5082, 18 September 1891, Page 2

The charges of dummyism against Mr Coleman Phillips have been finally abandoned by the Crown, in consequence of the failure to obtain a verdict under existing circumstances. The accused owes his immunity from the ultimate consequences of liis action more to the fact that he was tried by a special jury drawn from a sympathetic community than anything else. It could not have been expected, that such a tribunal would bring in a verdict of guilty, even though they may have been convinced that the law had been infringed. With them, it appears, the question was, not what is the law as printed in the Statutes, but what the law ought to have been, according to their notion. There is a strong sentiment in those portions of the North Island where there are still comparatively large areas of Crown lands to be settled, and still larger areas of native lands yet to be dealt with, that any and every means of forcing the alienation of

these lands should be adopted, without regard to future consequences. Our northern friends have not profited by the experience of the southern portion of the colony, and act as though they had a great continent to colonise. The trial was, in this respect, a political one and a farce. Mr Phillips' own admissions proved him to be guilty, but the jury virtually held that his infraction of the law was justifiable.