Untitled

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8996, 5 December 1907, Page 4

Various papers have taken various views of the action of the Government in recommending his Excellency the Governor to release the bookmakers who were recently sent to prison by the Ohristchurch magistrate for trespassing on a racecourse. The Government is lauded for its clemency and justice by some, while others condemn the interference with the course of justice. The strongest denunciation we have seen comes from the Christchurch "Truth, "which says:— "We do not think that such a scandalous abuse of the Governor's prerogative has ever occurred in the history of the Dominion, and, to he logical, the Government ought to summarily remove Mr McCarthy and Mr Day from the Bench for sending these injured innocents to prison at all.- In fact, it ought to go further, and place a sum on the Estimates next year to compensate them for the indignity of being sent to gaol by magistrates who arc so out of date as to deal with breaches of the law on their merits, and with a disregard of unscrupulous agitators who, for their own ends, try to deflect the course of justice." A telegram published in another column

states that the representative of a Christchurch paper who set out to ascertain whether street betting is still being carried on succeeded in making several bets with bookmakers or their agents. It is to be hoped that the representative was not acting in the interest of "Truth." It would come with especial bad grace for that virtuous paper to indues the cowmission of an offence by the commission of an offence in order to expose an offence. Whatever journal is concerned the act is not creditable to it.