Sydney Notes.

Pahiatua Herald, Volume II, Issue 160, 11 June 1894, Page 3

Sydney Notes.

(Special to the 'Herald.)

Since I last wrote the Dora blacks have been reprieved, arid a stormy revulsion in public opinion has set iu against tho death penalty taking its course with regard to tho Bridge-street burglars. It is said that in no other country in the world are there so many laws with the death penalty as a punishment for its infringement, and that even the English courts only recognise murder as warranting hanging. In all parts of the city small tables are set for tho purpose of signing petitions, and one by the General Post Office is so crowded by people wishing to sign that one has to wait fully a quarter of an hour ‘to work his way up to the table if he wishes to sign. In fact, it is the- topic of the hour, and few are bloody-minded enough to desire their execution. There are a few to judge by the correspondence in the press, but these are gentlemen (to judge by their literary style) so far set above and can look down upon us in such a Jove-like, thunder-compelling manner that we can scarcely expect human feeling from them. They desire life-blood as a safeguard to property, so I daresay that their property is the only human attribute about them. If this were carried into effect we should haVe to erect a terrace of gallows and hang ourselves off by the dozens every day, and no doubt start with our literary Joves, who no doubt got their property by questionable means. \\ o all have our livings to get, and to feed ourselves take the crust from somebody else, and the Bridgestreet burglars are only an aggravated form of present day humanity. This reminds one of the time when young Johns of the Moonlight gfuig of bushrangers was hanged. There was a revulsion of public opinion, anti the night before his execution a long solemn procession halted before Parliament House, headed b> a band playing the Dead March in Saul. Johns was serving a term of imprisonment, when he committed the deed for which be died. A follow prisoner, who slept in the same cell with him was continually taunting him about an elderly spinster lady, who visited Johns and read to him from tho Bible, and he said that Johns would be marrying her when lie got out. Johns whs in the state between being Christiaui' d by the lady's ministration. and ashamed of his better feelings, and tho taunts so obscenely and coarsely given goaded him into stabbing his fellow prisoner. The wound was merely a scratch, but the prisoner’s outcries caused more attention that should have been paid to it, and the press got hold of it, and as

good as demanded Johns’ life for the act. Johns sworo to the last that he only did it to frighten the man into letting him have peace. It is certainly true what t' ese Jove-like correspondents to the press assert, that hanging is a cure for crime. The man who is hung is cured of bad habits ; but it can scarcely be said that it is a cure for all crime, or we should have been free of it three thousand years ago. when Moses enacted the short law of a

“ life for a life.” The fact is that no mutter what laws are made to wipe out such criminals as "Williams and Montgomery (the Bridge street burglars), they trill keep springing up with their usual mushroom-I ike growth, undeterred by punishment of any description. It is not that crime is hereditary, but our conditions are, and wc are all animals as far as the stomach is concerned, and wc will have food, like the ravenous dogs fight over a shin bone. That is primarily the cailse of crime, and it branches out into the devious ways so that we fail to recognise it. It grows into a habit, and civilisation has so many wants. The rich man enacts many laws to protect his property but they all sink into insignificance beside* ths fact that his money would keep thousands of men who are starving. It he enacted laws to deal with poverty and remove that, there would be little enough crime prevalent amidst us. It was only the other day that a young man was arrested for theft, who had just been liberated from Darlinghurst, and when asked where ho stoic the flour (it was a TOlb bag), he said it was more honorable to steal than to live upon women, and that he had to do one thing or the other. Those are only the cases we hear about. Twomen smashed windows upon tho same day to get into goal, and one smashed

two. tho second one under tho nose of a policeman, su as to make sure of getting free lodging. I believe he wont into the shop first to ask if the window was insured, ro tho man was honest in his in-

tentions to tho storekeeper. It seems to me that these actions show a groat amount of imbecility; the ycungman who took Um bog of floor was vastly more practical, but after all it is only different phase 4 * of what we call tho depression ; and shows that theft is tho offspring of poverty, and that if we wish to do away with crime we must first commence to deal with poverty in a systematical manner.