Untitled

Timaru Herald, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 11976, 27 January 1903, Page 2

Our. contemporary, the Wellington "Evening Post," has an article on the Lynch case, .and admits that the death sentence was inevitable, seeing that the Court had overruled the plea of naturalisation to the Transvaal, and that the jury had' convicted the prisoner. On the subject of carrying out the >sentence our Wellington contemporary says : —" Colonel Lynch surrendered himself, and decided to stand his trial, apparently in the full belief that- the supreme penalty of the law would not in any case be inflicted upon him. Was such a belief justified? It would be somewhat, anomalous to execute him while disfranchisement is the ordinary punishment to be exacted from Cape Colony rebels, although in his case the doctrine that blood is thicker than water cannot, as in those of the Cape Dutch, be urged in extenuation. As a matter of policy it may reasonably bts asked whether the execution of Colonel Lynch would be wise? If for no other reason, should it not be prevented to save him from being regarded by many members of the Empire as a martyr?" The inadvisability of "making a martyr" of the prisoner is probably the strongest argument against hanging him'; but it will be seen that the "Evening Post" admits that Lynch's treason has not got even the poor plea in extenuation which has been urged on behalf of the Dutch rebels in Cape Colony. He is not of Dutch extraction. But the " Evening Post" doubts the power of the Crown to interfere with the sentence except by granting a free pardon. We can, however, call to mind more than one case in which the death sentence passed on men convicted of high treason has been commuted to transportation. In 1848, William Smith O'Brien and Meagher were convicted of high treason, and were sentenced to death, but the sentences were commuted to transportation for life, and the prisoners were sent out to Tasmania, and about eight years afterwards were pardoned. x