H.—2l.

In the first place, it appears to us to be obvious that, in the interests of all those who have or may have what are conceived to be moral claims to the bounty of the State, there should be some definite rule by which a final settlement can be arrived at, so as to preclude those claims from being afterwards successfully agitated. If there is no such rule, it appears to us that the Government of the colony must in all cases be exceedingly chary in allowing any such claim at all, lest its allowance should be treated as an admission not merely that the claimant has a fair moral claim upon the bounty of the State, but that he has a moral right to compensation or indemnity against loss, which are very different matters. Apart from the application of the wholesome and necessary rule of law that every settlement of a disputed claim honestly and fairly arrived at shall never afterwards be disturbed, the weakness of the claim of the claimant in the present case appears to us to be that it assumes that if the claimant can establish that if the evidence adduced before us had been adduced before the jury on his trial in December, 1887, then that jury would or ought to have acquitted him of the charge of sheep-stealing, and that, consequently, he has a moral claim not merely to bounty from the State, but to complete indemnity against all losses direct and indirect which he can attribute to his conviction, and also to a large sum by way of compensation in respect of what his counsel calls " false imprisonment," in respect of loss of character and reputation, and even in respect of suffering to his family. We have the honour to report that no such moral right to compensation or indemnity has ever, so far as we are aware, been recognised or allowed by the Government or Parliament of Great Britain, or of any community regulated by the principles of English law. Further, we are aware of one authentic case only in which a large sum has been paid to a person wrongly convicted—namely, the case of Adolph Beck, to whom a sum of £5,000 was paid upon his absolute innocence being conclusively established. Whether or not this sum was based upon any estimate of Mr. Beck's actual losses there is nothing before us to show. We think that it is unlikely that that was the case, but it is immaterial to inquire, as the case of Mr. Beck has no point of similarity with the case of the present claimant. Mr. Beck was charged in March, 1896, before Sir Forest Fulton, then Common Sergeant, at the Old Bailey, on several charges of fraud. He was found guilty and was sentenced to seven years' penal servitude, which sentence he served. In 1904, nearly three years after he had been released, Mr. Beck was again arrested on a charge similar to those on which he had been previously convicted. He was tried before Mr. Justice Grantham and was again convicted. The learned Judge had, however, misgivings about the case, and he postponed sentence until the next session. Meantime the actual offender, a man named Smith, was arrested on similar charges, based on acts committed whilst Mr. Beck was in custody. This led to further inquiries and the consequent release of Mr. Beck, and his pardon in respect of both the convictions of 1896 and 1904. The Master of the Rolls (Sir Eichard Henn Collins), Sir Spencer Walpole, and Sir John Edge (late Chief Justice of the High Court of the North-western Provinces of India) were then appointed by the Home Secretary a committee to make inquiry as to the circumstances of Mr. Beck's convictions. The report of the committee will be found in the Parliamentary Library. It appears from this report, pp. xi and xii, that the Judge who had tried Mr. Beck's case in 1896 had excluded certain evidence which, if it had been admitted, must have resulted in Mr. Beck's acquittal. Nothing could be more emphatic upon these points than the report, from which it is sufficient to quote a few sentences only from p. xii. "If Mr. Beck was entitled to the verdict of the jury on these points he never had it. He was convicted on evidence from which everything that told, or might be thought to tell, in his favour was excluded. His case was never tried. Two questions therefore arise: Was the Judge's ruling right ? Did it carry with it these consequences ? In our opinion the ruling cannot be supported, and the consequences named ensued." ' Farther, it appears from the report (p. vi) that immediately after Mr. Beck s first conviction, in 1896, he petitioned the Home Office on the grounds that the case was one of mistaken identity and that there had been a mistrial, both of which grounds were strictly true. The system on which such petitions are dealt with

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