WHO TOLD?

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1366, 9 October 1886, Page 3

WHO TOLD?

The difficulty of keeping a secret which is known to more than one ptrson increases in geometrical ratio in proportion to the number of the original depositaries, and it might almost have been predicted, therefore, that the results of the analysis made of portions of the body of the late Captain Cain would in one way or other transpire. The public interest in the matter is so keen, and the activity of those whose business it is to be purveyors of news so great, that it needed the greatest watchfulness to keep the matter concealed, and this was so well known and so fully appreciated that the Minister for Justice appears to have given very strict injunctions to everybody concerned to communicate nothing whatever to the press or to the public until after the trial of Hall upon the indictment ujfcn which he at present stands committed. Those instructions seem to have been faithfully carried out by the Crown Prosecutor, the police, the medical men who conducted the autopsy, and all and singular (as the lawyers phrase it) who were connected with it, for they have persistently and determinedly refused to afford even a hint as to what was or was not discovered. All this was exactly as it should have been, for it was very properly foreseen that if it should happen that indications were found leading to the belief that the deceased had been a victim to the diabolical art of the poisoner, and the fact were permitted to become known, it was likely to be prejudicial to the trial of the present indictment upon its merits. Tor, however strictly a Judge may charge a jury to dismiss from their minds any considerations other than those arising from the evidence led in the case before them, and however conscientiously a juror may strive to decide as though he neither knew nor had heard anything beyond the testimony given in Court, it is not to be doubted that the alleged facts in connection with the recent post mortem examination are such as are calculated to influence the jury to the prejudice of the prisoners, and not the less powerfully because unconsciously. And as the aim of all our criminal procedure is to secure the impartial trial of all who are accused of breaking the law of the land, it is very greatly to be regretted that the wise and necessary precautions of the Minister in charge of this particular department should have failed ot being effectual. We do not allege that the reported discovery of antimony in large quantities in Captain Cain’s remains is true; nor at this moment are we concerned to enquire whether it is so or not. All we say is that it is a thousand pities, even if true, that the fact should have been made known before the impending trial, while if it be not a fact at all the statement is more than a pity—it is little short of a crime. “ Who told the story ?” is therefore a question which ought to be answered at the first convenient opportunity. It is said that it was a Minister, and that that Minister was Mr Ballance, but he declines, as we understand the telegrams, to say whether he ever made any statement at all such as that reported, whether he was misunderstood, or whether anything he may have said was founded upon reliable information or upon mere rumor. That is probably the wisest attitude to take up under the circumstances, and it will be only fair for the jury to regard anything that may have been said or printed as mere unauthenticated rumor for the present. After the trial now about to be entered upon it will be time enough to enquire how the late Captain Cain came by his death, and if by poison, by whose hand it was administered. If it prove hereafter that the story as already published is correct, and that Mr Ballance was responsible for giving it premature publicity, we venture to think that it will also transpire that he has gone through more than one very bad quarter of an hour with his colleagues, the Attorney-General and the Minister for Justice, and very deservedly so too.