A LUCKY PRISONER.

West Coast Times, Issue 2848, 20 May 1878, Page 2

A LUCKY PRISONER.

The Auckland correspondent of the Otago -Daily Times telegraphed recently to that journal as follows :— " The Herald has a strong article on the case of H. S. Meyers, the merchant who was sentenced at the session of the Supreme Court to six months' imprisonment for fraudulent bankruptcy, but who has been removed from the gaol to the Di trict Hospital, where he ia comfortably provided for. It says, " Law knows no distinction, and it must be fairly argued that what a poor forlorn prisoner cannot obtain, a well to do man who may have saved money through his owa frauds, should not be entitled to secure, either by outward pressure or by means of any influence whatever. Imagine a wretched pickpocket or burglar (and there is at least one in the gaol now undergoing a sentence of fourteen years for burglary, and who is slowly dying of consumption, and who is an inmate of the gaol hospital) renting a couple of furnished rooms and driukiag his hundred shilling port as Meyers does. This case of Meyers seems to bare been wrong trora the first. Neither the Governor of the gaol nor the visiting justices were consulted or appealed to on the subject.aud probably the latter may feel it their duty to call the attention ot the Minister of Justice to the subject. There should be no such extreme distinction as this case so palpably shows. Equal justice and judgment should be meted out to all alike, and if this is now being done in this particular instance, where a pleasant parlor and bedroom with good living, with visits from friends briugiug the delicacies of the season, are provided for a prisoner who has transgressed the law, then we require a new raomenclature and various changes in the dictionary."