PLAIN FACTS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XI, Issue 6, 1 June 1883, Page 21

PLA I N FACTS.

(From the Wairarapa Ste»\) Our contemporary the Post mentions that a Royal Commission on the management of the Dnnedin Gaol has been appointed, and says, " We have urged the advisableness of this course ever since the con- j tents of Mr. Feldwick's celebrated return, presented to Parliament last session, were published." The- Post forgets. The Post reiterated that an enquiry should be iustituted into the management of the gaols of the Colony. There it no need to single out the Dunedin Gaol. We believe its management in the past will pass muster. But a howl having been raised over the management of the Dunedin Gaol, for the express purpose of getting rid of an old public servant ex-Governor Caldwell — the public mind can only be set at rest by an enquiry into the management of the chief gaols of the Colony, so that it may be seen whether the odium hurled against the Dunedin Gaol was deserved or otherwise. Attention has been directed by some of the leading papers of New Zealand to the recently-published report on prison offences as indicating that the management of the prisons of the Colony is very defective. In that report the Dunedin Gaol occupies a satisfactory position as regards the number and character of punishments inflicted for prison regulations. A Royal Commission to enquire into the management of the Dunedin Gaol is consequently totally unable to grasp the real question at i-sue. Its ncope is far too limited. What is wanted, and what the Post has demanded, is that a Commission should be appointed to enquire into the management, not merely of the Dunedin Gaol, but of the prisons at Lyttelton, Wellington, and Auckland. Anything short of this can be little better than a blind. We regret to find that in referring to the Dunedin Gaol the Post pursues a policy of misrepresentation. Speaking of the necessity for an investigai ion re the Dunedin Gaol it says — " This necessity was materially accentuated by the strange attitude assumed by a section of the New Zealand Press. Those journals took up the rash and peculiar position of championing through thick and thin the late Governor of the Dunedin Gaol, Mr. Caldwell. He had not been attacked, but that did not matter. Evidently his champions knew, or guessed, there were weak points in his armour, etc." If our contemporary will look over his files he will find that Mr. Caldwell was atiacked, not only indirectly, as the head of the management of the Dunedin Gaol, but directly and in a significantly spiteful manner by the Post itself, as well as by a gentleman with whom the Post is understood to be tolerably intimate— the Wellington correspondent of the Otago Daily Times. We must say that we are astonished after the outrageous and defamatory epithets that anpeared in the leading columns of tbe Post respecting Mr. Cald'ill that it should now turn round and declare that " he had not attacked." Our contemporary has evidently a bad memory when he cannot look back beyond the brief period of a Parliamentary recess. As for the " weak points " in Mr. Caldwell's armour, they have not yet been pointed out, and although he has left the service to escape systematic persecution, we question if any Commission wilt develop them. Nay, more than that, we are confident that a Royal Commission on gaols would be likely to bring^ Mr. Caldwell's " strong points " to the front. In the meantime we should like to know what Mr. Caldwell's weak points have been. Apart from mere abuse they have not been pointed out. The Post promised, we think, on one occasion to give evidence against that gentleman. Will our contemporary do so ? The Post g >es on to say that what it did, and what other journals did. was to " reprint information." Nobody could have objected to that, but the Post and other papeuPwent out of their way to.draw 'nferen^^Hnd make angry comments that were levelled, obviously lor a special purpose, at an officer who, at the time, had his handa tied and his mouth sealed most effectually by Prison -Inspector Hume's military red-tape. lhe plain fact is that the Government made a great blunder vhen they overlooked colonial merit and offered a dire affront to the gaolers ot the Colony by inviting applications for the post of inspector outside the Colony. We are not now going to criticise the qualifications of the individual selected. Captain Hume's original reports speak for themselves, and he will possibly be on his trial soon enough.

Bat we say that, to use a mild phrase, the Government committed a grave error of judgment when they made a position in an English gaol % sine qua nan for promotion to the chief post over the gaols of the Colony. A more flagrant l insult to the gaolers of the Colony could scarcely have been offered. This original error is bearing its * natural fruit. Directly the new inspector obtained a footing in the Colony the position of the more efficient officers in this branch of the public service became insecure and unpleasant. They were menaced by a new broom who threatened to sweep them aside in order to make room for superannuated military cronies. What else could be expected than that the senior officer of the chief gaol of the Colony should be regarded as a dangerous rival, and that the new inspector should go strategically to work to make his position so uncomfortable that he must quit the service ? Captain Hurse'a safety lay in Mr. Caldwell's retirement : heace the systematic persecution which that officer suffered. First there was a little preliminary maneuvering. Captain Hume, himself a soldier-turnkey, tried to change the composition of the gaol officers, and recommended, with a keen eye to Mr. Caldwell, that the senior officers should be got rid of, and their appointments filled by old fogies from the British army. In this he was unsuccessful. His report was laughed at. His next step was to recommend certain alterations in the working of the gaols which he believed would be obnoxious to Mr. Caldwell. His third was to make a personal friend of the Governor of the Lyttelton Gaol, and in other ways to show Mr. Caldwell that he was out of luck and in great disfavour. His influence had something to do in the reduction of Mr. Caldwell's salary by £100 a year and an increase in the salaries of other gaolers. All these affronts were submitted to, till finally Mr. Caldwell, through the instrumentality of bis arch enemy, was ordered to be transferred from the place that had been his home for a quarter of a century to the extreme North— the gaol at Auckland — and then to escape further systematic persecution, Mr. Caldwell tendered his resignation. These are the plain, unvarnished facts. Mr. Caldwell did not leave the public service because of Mr. Feldwick's paper, or the comments of a few newspapers misled by the Post and the Wellington correspondent of the Otago Daily Times. He forfeited his position to escape the persecution of an individual who had been placed in a position over him, and whose designs the Government felt bound to carry out, even at the sacrifice of an officer who3e long and valuable services in troublesome times entitled him to the grateful recognition of the Colony and its administration. The Hume-Caldwell episode, in which we regret to say the Post has played an important part, is a blot on the escutcheon of this Colony as black as sin — a blot which we do not think the present administration is capable of wiping out.