CHIEF JUSTICE AND CRIMINAL STATISTICS

New Zealand Tablet, 14 July 1910, Page 1091

CHIEF JUSTICE AND CRIMINAL STATISTICS

In the course of a letter to the New Zealand Times of July 5, the Rev. C. J. Venning, S.M., takes the Chief Justice to task for his remarks regarding education made at a meeting over which he presided the previous Saturday evening. Father Venning writes: ‘ When Sir Robert Stout donned the mantle of Chief Justice he ought to have doffed that of the partisan and done what lay in his power to maintain alike the dignity and the impartiality that are properly due to his exalted and responsible position. It is unworthy of the Chief Justice, and to the last degree unbecoming the office he bears, to descend into the arena of party strife, to engage as a partisan, to so far forget himself as to make unjustifiable attacks upon any section of the community. But it seems that he must air his old traditions lest they become blue-mouldy. Sir Robert Stout is a prejudiced witness on matters affecting religion or religious schools. It is the red flag to the bull to even mention the subject in his presence. His utterances on Saturday night were marked by a discreditable lack of that judicial mind which we have a right to find even in

the rank and file of our judicial bench, much more in its chief occupant. It is difficult for people to listen with patience to such an exhibition from an official placed in a position which, of all others, demands at least the decent external show of an impartial mind towards sectarian rivalries. The judicial ermine, like Caesar’s wife, should be above suspicion. Sir Robert Stout may be the pink of amenity and mildness when seated in the place of justice, but he loses much of his charm when in extra-judicial functions he falls foul of men or things that cross his path at the wrong angle. On Saturday night he gave out his old decrepit statistical fairy tale about the relative merits of the secular and religious systems of education. Of» course, most people have learned not to take Sir Jlobert Stout seriously in any matter of this kind. Still for the sake of the few who might be misled, I challenge Sir Robert Stout, or his seconder or any defender of the secular system, to draw any sane logical conclusion from the badly-cooked gaol returns or criminal records in New Zealand. The charges insinuated by the Chief Justice are absolutely groundless, worthless, unproven, and unprovable. The Official Year Book returns are useless for statistical comparison if we attempt to prove anything for or against religious education. The foundation of the criminal returns, as contained in any pile of statistics, is the voluntary, unchallenged statement of prisoners whose, uncorroborated word would never be accepted in any court of justice —who never hesitate to lie about their religious belief if they once get it into their degenerate heads that there is the faintest shadow of a prospect of advantage to be gained by doing so. It is a curious and persistent freak of which the Chief Justice cannot plead ignorance. Sir Robert Stout would probably take a psychological fit the moment he would begin to unravel the network of deceit that is to be found in a prisoner’s brain. Of course, only a person in imminent risk of a padded cell would contend that the moral character of a country is determined by the mere number or ratio (of arrests, or trials, or convictions) to population. We can no more form an opinion on these data than can the fisherman judge of the fish in the sea by those which he has in his net. Some people no more dream of considering the value of the arguments they use against religion than they would think of stopping to consider the geological formation of a stone which they pick up to throw at a dog.' The whole argument about criminal records and religious or secular education can resolve itself into this one important question: What schools produce the criminals? Neither Sir Robert Stout nor any other champion of the secular system has any statistics to prove the point. I emphatically state that absolutely no information on this subject is contained in the charge sheet, gaol book, criminal returns, Official Year Book, or anywhere else. How does Sir Robert Stout know, then ? Is he inspired ? He simply does not know and cannot speak on the subject. His argument is like reasoning from the unknown to the known. No prisoner is ever asked what school he attended. Does it follow because. a prisoner chooses to state that he is a member' of such and such a Church that therefore, he must have attended a religious school ? Innocence abroad ! Sir Robert Stout seems to reason in that fashion if his words have any meaning at all. The whole thing is a fallacy. The argument is valueless.’