ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE.

Wellington Independent, Volume XVI, Issue 1611, 23 August 1861, Page 5

ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE.

(To the Editor of the Wellington Independent.) As the acknowledged champion of the peopie's rights, I trust you will give publicity, through your widely circulated columns to the following case. My only object in preferring such a request is that the community at large may know how justice is meted out in the Resident Magistrate's Court, and in addition to the dispositions will only make the following brief observation. It is not very long since a youth of tender years was committed by the Resident Magistrate to t&ke his trial for pilfering a few bits of wood, valued by the prosecutrix at some four or five shillings, and sentenced by His Honor the Judge of the Supreme Court, to 9 months imprisonment. His Honor in mercy to the accused, directed the warden of the gaol to keep him from the other prisoners that he might not be contaminated. In the present case a man of mature years, being clearly convicted of a murderous assault, is summarily sentenced by the same magistrate to twenty-one days imprisonment.

Whence, Mr.; Editor, arises this disparity in the punishment awarded ? Surely if a boy is to be committed for trial and sentenced to 3 months imprisonment for an act of petty pilfering, whilst a full grown man is only to receive tweuty one days for an atrocious aud murderous assault, the sooner our penal cade is revised the better. F. H, Bradet.