THE Wellington Independent. " Nothing extenuate; Nor set down aught in malice." THURSDAY MORNING, 19th MARCH.

Wellington Independent, Volume XVII, Issue 1844, 19 March 1863, Page 3

THE Wellington Independent. " Nothing extenuate ; Nor set down aught in malice." THURSDAY MORNING, 19th MARCH.

THE RECENT CRIMINAL SITTINGS. In the cases recently brought before His Honor Mr. Justice Johnston and a Juiy, there were one or two features which are deserving of a passing allusion. The calendar was not a heavy one, and was noteworthy, not so much from the character of tbe charges, as from the class of the majority of the criminals. On the first day, of three enses tried, one was for robbery on the^part of a soldier; a second was a charge of criminal assault against a soldier belonging to the 57th Regiment, stationed ut Wanganui, and another was a case of unlaw* fully wounding, in which a soldier, himself a prisoner, was the prosecutor, and a discharged soldier the accused. Thus one whole day's business was exclusively devoted to the trial of men in the service of Her Majesty as private soldiers, and the second day's trials also afforded an unenviable prominency to the same class. Three soldiers stood at the Bar to answer charges of robbery, and with one exception, all were convicted. Apart from these the Criminal Sitting would have been but of little importance, and the Judge might, but for one or two cases, have been presented by the Sheriff with the customary, white kid gloves, which, by their spotless purity, fittingly betokeu the occurrence of a virgin assize.

A very grave question arises flora a consideration of tbese facts. Why a;e so many of our criminals soldiers, and is there anything in the nature of the military branch of the Queen's service which makes men move than usually prone to commit breaches of the law? It is not easy to supply a satisfactory solution of this problem, but at least a partial explanation may be found, in the circumstance that service in the rank and file leaves men with a good deal of time unoccupied. Educated people might find no difficulty in passing those intervals of leisure with both profit and pleasure, but the class to which we allude do not all possess the advantages of intellectaal culture. It is well known that many private soldiers are well educated, and the greater number possessed of, at least, rudimentary instruction, but it is not from that portion of the army that the criminal class is mainly drawn. The bUck sheep, are the ignorant and unlettered, those, who, alas, have never been taught the doctrines of religion and morality, and who thus never feel, because they have not learned, their restraining influences. Men are naturally more pione to evil than to good, poor human nature in its uncultured state, will bring forth but sour and bitter fruit, and it depends on the careful And diligent hand of the cultivator f whether the evil shall be partially eradicated, and the good developed. When men ar* drawn from the lowest ranks of society, and duly drilled into regulation pattern, something further still remains to be done. You can easily make a recruit perfect in the manual exercises, but it is a task requiring infinite patience, tact and perseverance, to free him from the debasing associations of the past. Nay, more, when ignorance has been the only fault ; it is almost equally difficult, to find a substitute for the hard and continuous labour which previously occupied his time. The necessity for this labour removed, the problem of exis tence solved by a paternal government, which provides the means of daily subsistence, what shall be do during his unoccupied hours. Read : — he does not care for books, and the occupation, pleasant to some, would be to him but a painful effort, he may even be incapable of doing so. The same objection applies to all other intellectual occupations, and vice in its coarsest and most repulsive form becomes his resource. Take the case of Michael Day as an instance. This soldier, a mere boy in years, had been repeatedly in prison before for various offences. He had been guilly of a transgression of the law on that very morning at one o'clock, when io the yard of the Te Aro Hotel, an enraged husband stabbed him tor being with his wife uo.de-

circumstances, which to say the least of them, were very suspicious. It was his indulgence in dissipation, which led to the assault, for which Henry was tried, and convicted, and the admission of the prosecutor under cross-exami-nation, that he could not read, supplies a melancholy indication of one of the causes which made him so accessible lo temptation.

But theve is auolher cause still which practically speaking, supplies a motive to prompt those men to the commission of crime. It is the frantic desire which some wild spirits feel to be relieved from the somewhat stringent control of military discipline. Rather than continue to submit to this, they will dare all the penalties of civil law, and undergo all the pains of imprisonment; because, till a few months ago, it was found that a tolerably long sentence, say of four years, exempted them from future Beivice in the ranks. We believe matters are changed now ; that a recent order from the War Office has rendered it inevitable that the offender, whatever his crime, or whatever the lenglh of his punishment, should, when he had undergone it, return to the service. His Honor alluded to this in his charge, but the^uggestion ! then made would appear to be thus already ] virtually carried out. j

A powerful reined)' fot the evil complained of would be found in regular manual employment. It is not so long ago that Major Dwyer, acting on this idea, engaged the troops here in perfecting the approaches to the barracks. That was an excellent plan, it initiated a highly praiseworthy principle, and what was done in that case might be also done in many others with equal profit and advantage.