LIGALISED MURDER.

Observer, Volume XVI, Issue 920, 22 August 1896, Page 7

LIGALISED MURDER.

Is Hanging Not a Crime ?

Somekody has well said that the worst use you can put a man to is to hang him. That, unhappily, does not appear to be the opinion of the bulk of our legislatorsThe House has just thrown out Mr W. W. Collins Abolition of Capital Punishment Bill, but the great reform urged with so much eloquence by Mr Collins is simply delayed ; it must come, sooner or later, for, as the world grows older it grows more humane, more liberal and more enlightenedA hundred years ago or less, sheep stealing waß a hanging matter, and so were many other minor crimes. A hundred years ago or less, ' the sacredness of human life ' was so little thought of that a man who picked a pocket or snatched a watch was liable on conviction to expiate his offence on the gallows ! In those days the hangman was hardly ever idle, and the public executions at Newgate formed one of tho most popular ' sights ' of the metropolis.

The same contempt for human suffering and callousness respecting human life existed in New South Wales, then a penal settlement, as were noticeable in England. And the horrors enacted on the site now occupied by the city of Sydney were repeated at Norfolk Island, where to this day they show the underground dungeons, the iron-barred cages where convicts were confined like wild beasts, the leg-irons, and other hideous relics of the time when the island was a veritable hell upon earth. The soil of this island, one of the most beautiful spots uuder the sun, is literally saturated with the blood of convicts, who were butchered often without trial and to satisfy the whim or caprice of the brutal tyrants who ruled them. One ot the most pathetic letters extant is that written about a hundred years ago by a Syduey convict to his mother in England. The poor boy — he was only 17 — had broken into an officer's tent und stolen a silk handkerchief valued at ;">s. He was sentenced to death, and it was on the eve of his execution that he wrote to his mother, confessing his guilt, and acknowledging the justice of his sentence. Had this boy lived in our time and amongst us, he would probably have been released under the Probation Act !

When it is remembered how many innocent persons have died upon the gallows as the result of conspiracy, perjured evidence, the eloquence of counsel, and the stupidity of juries, when the demoralising effect on the minds of thousands caused by these legal murders is remembered, when the awful responsibility attaching to the killing of a fellow creature, whether with the sanction of the law or without it, is borne in mind, surely capital punishment should find few advocates, and it is safe to say that those few will become fewer and fewer every jear until victory crowns the efforts of those who would fain see the gallows relegated to the oblivion which has fallen upon the rack and the thumbscrew. Several members during the recent debate spoke of the ' maudlin sentiment ' which prompted people to advocate the abolition of the death penalty. Precisely the same cry was raised a hundred years ago when pocket picking and sheep stealing were punished with death. The maudlin sentimentalist who wants hanging abolished can afford to smile. The reform he urges may be long delayed, but come it must and will.

We are told that the conditions in question are not so unalterable as the laws of the Medes and Persians, and that the Board of Directors are at any time willing to consider suggestions that may still further liberalise them and make them acceptable to the mining community. And, as an earnest of this, we are in a position to say that careful attention will be given to several of the suggestions we made last week, with a view to their incorporation in the regulations. These are as follow : — (1) That piovision should be made for the return of the deposit if the application is unsuccessful. (2) That an appeal to the Board from the decision of the Manage? should be allowed. (3J That provision should be made for extending the time for flotation beyond twelve months in cases where there is reasonable evidence that the negotiations are likely to end satisfactorily. (4) And making the period of lease fifty years instead of twenty-five. These are all equitable provisions,but even when they are conceded, it cannot be said that the condition offer much prospect of success to the local syndicate. The stray prospector who comes across something good may do well enough out of the five per cent which the company offert him, in the event of flotation, for information of a

the land is locked up, while inducements are held out to English syndicates to come along and try their luck. It is useless to attempt to disguise this fact. The flotation conditions are also virtually impossible to the local people, while the condition giving the company a clear thirty chains round each claim is a clever device to prove the esstate by throwing open less than oneeighth of it ou impossible terms, while the. other seven-eighths or more is closely held by the company, iv order that it may profit by-and-bye from the unearned increment-

The OiiSEKVKK would be willing to confess that its article last week was unfair and that these regulations are liberal if it were possible to do so truthfully. But the Obsebveb cannot make any confession of the kind. It only wonders at the audacity of the Kauri Freehold Gold Estates Company in putting forward such one-sided regulations and expecting men to prove its property by the expenditure of energy and money with so little prospect of benefiting themselves. These conditions should be published, and applications invited, in London and not in Auckland, or else the Kauri Freehold Gold Estates Company should content itself with a reasonable share of the ultimate profit. Just now, it demands everything and concedes little or nothing.