Wanganui Herald. (PUBLISHED DAILY.) THURSDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1884. THE MIGNONETTE CASE.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XIX, Issue 5492, 11 December 1884, Page 2

Wanganui Herald. (PUBLISHED DAILY.) THURSDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1884. THE MIGNONETTE CASE.

The sentence of death just passed upon two of the three survivors of the illfatecl yacht " Mignonette/ for the murder of the boy Parker, whose flesh they subsisted pn for some days, opens up the whole subject i of, 'how far-j inature's' law of self preservation J cah* be urgej. in extenuation of a Jbreach' of ; the criminal . code. Had the ; unfortunate lad Parker been killed wantonly, i and under the most .aggravated of circumstances, the law could have, done no more to his slayers than carry out' the sentence under which the unhappy meri, Dudley and Stevens, now lie, for having in the frenzy of faminp taken ;the boy's life to save their own. If the case is considered as an abstract one of, right and wrong and -all extenuating circumstances eliminated^ then undoubtedly the men were, guilty of murder and, liable to the extreme penalty of the law j but it is impossible to dissever the offence from its cause, and, the question arises is it lawful to take one life to save many ? Famished crews have often been driven *tb cannibalism, before the case under review, and we do not remember the survivors ever being arraigned on a charge, of murder before. \ It may well be imagined that the crime, if :crime it really is, is one of very infrequent occurrence, as only the most extreme tortures of famine could drive any civilised being to kill and devour a fellow creature, therefore it is not a case calling for special severity of punishment. Indeed it might well be asked, given the same ciroumstances under which the lad Parker was sacrificed, would the intelligent jury who tried the case, and the Judge who presided, to say nothing of the members of the Bar and the other occupants of the court during the trial, have acted any different to the, manner in which the condemned men did when in the delirium of hunger, and thirst on the broad Atlantic in a fifteen feet dingy,, with neither food nor water, under a tropical sun, and day following day without bringing any rescuing sail tp their relief. It was a horrible strait to be in, and the temptation was more than the unfortunate men could bear j they saw the boy dying , of hunger, thirst, and exposure, and the fierceness of despair drove them to a deed that no sane man would commit. We make no excuses for the men ; they need none, they were frantic from their sufferings, and took a life to save their own. Had they died, as they ,,mosst s likely would have done, and the boy's life ebbed peacefully away in the stupor of exhaustion, they would have proved themselves martyrs and heroes of the purest metal, but Nature was too strong for them, and they could not resist the terrible cravings of hunger any longer, so they killed the boy, who, it is granted by all three survivors, could not have lived many hours longer, and saved their liveß, only to find themselves rescued from death by starvation on the ocean, to be sentenced to die by the hangman's rope in England soon after their rescue from the Mignonette's dingy. It is a terrible story, and the last part of it is almost as heartrending as any portion of their fearful sufferings. That the extreme sentence of the law will be carried out we cannot believe, as there were so many extenuating circumstances connected with the case, and we shall await with great anxiety the final decision of this now sensational story of the sea, which in all its blood-curdling and hideous details, far surpasses even the most far-fetched creation of the novelist's or the poet's fertile imaginations. Only those who have been cast away at sea and found themselves in a frail boat, thousands of miles from land, with little or no food, water, or proper clothing, can judge the case of the unhappy men now under sentence of death, and it is useless to speculate on what any of those who condemn them for their killing of the boy Parker, would do if similarly circumstanced to-morrow, as nothing short of the actual case Vould answer that question conclusively. The ill-fated Greeley-Polar expedition proves that men will eat human flesh sooner than starve, and all history tells us that were two or more human beings left without food, with no immediate hope of rescue, a time would come in their sufferings, when frenzy would take the

place of reason, and cannibalism be | restored 1 * to in order toprqlong 4 tiie life of the survivor or survivorp. Under bucli terrible circumstances men oease to be reasoning beings, and accountable for their frenzied aotions, and should be judged from that standpoint. No Qne would advocate murder and cannibalism in his sane moments; but we are.: afraid many would practice it were they similarly placed to the survivors of either the ill-fated " Mignonette " or Lieut. Greeley's Arotic party, when those unhappy wretches were driven by the instinct of self-preservation to eat i human flesh in order to prolong their {own lives until their rescue Bhould fie effected, Dudley and Stevens suffered, las no criminal could be called upon, to isufferby'the law for even the, crim- ' mittal df the most brutal of crimes, 'and now'fiiid themselves only snatched ! from the jaws of death by famine,, to be sentenced to the same fate, at the s hands of the hangman. The case is a j curious one, and the first instance we j ! ; can 1 call to mind, of the law being put jin force against the survivors of a ship-- [ wreck who have been driven to cannibajlism toprblojag their lives^ and w¥ shall 'a wait witli much curiosity the final outcome of this now hirijforical story of the sea. [Since the above was in type, a telegram arintfuricfes 'that a reprieve I has been granted.] ' ' '