The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prevalebit. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1886. THE CAIN CASE.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1417, 26 November 1886, Page 2

The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prevalebit. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1886. THE CAIN CASE.

Several of our contemporaries have been, as we think veiy properly, taking the Government to task, for dilatoriness in connection with the Cain case, and urging, as we did the other day, that no time should be lost in setting afoot a Magisterial enquiry with a view if possible to bringing to justice the perpetrator or perpetrators of what was undoubtedly a foul murder, coolly planned and deliberately executed. Th tTimatu Herald is one of the most outspoken, and hints that the future evidence recently alluded to in our telegrams as having cropped up since the Coroner’s inquest is probably connected with the discovery that “a person who is now in South Canterbury was, during a visit to England, entrusted with a box for Thomas Hall,” the inference from which statement is obviously that among the contents of the box was a supply of those deleterious articles which, in one case at anyrate, Hall has been proved to have employed fo such evil purpose. If so the missing link in the chain of evidence will have been supplied, and the charge will probably be sheeted home to the offender. 'But even if there be nothing at all in this story of the box from England, the evidence taken before the Coroner is, as the Wellington Post truly says, in itself sufficient to “establish a case of the very strongest suspicion, if nothing more, against one person,” and the public will have, learned with much satisfaction from the telegram published yesterday that it has been determined to place that person upon his trial. For, as the Herald very correctly points out, the evidence given by Mrs Ostler was in itself such as to afford ample reason for pushing the investigation farther, that lady, it will be remembered, having sworn that on a certain occasion she saw Hall go to a sideboard and supply Captain Cain with some liquor in a tumbler, and that a few minutes afterwards Captain Cain was taken violently ill, his symptoms being those which, it is well known, would be produced by the kind of poison afterwards discovered in his body. But whether or not the enquiry now about to be commenced result in sufficient evidence being forthcoming to establish the charge against Hall, there can be no doubt whatever that the Government has acted rightly in setting afoot an investigation before the proper authority, as it is at any rate of the highest importance to make sure of the evidence already known “to be available, Had any of the witnesses examined before the Coroner died or left the colony before farther proceedings had been taken, the loss of their evidence would have been irremediable. We agree with the Herald in the opinion that “ had Captain Cain been poisoned in London instead of Timaru, the person suspected of the crime on such a mass of testimony would long before this have been charged before a stipendary Magistrate, no matter whaf the verdict of the Coroner’s jury might Ijave be.en ? ” and we confess we cannot understand \(/hy so much delay lias been suffered to occur. But the right step has now been taken, and we are confident we only express the unanimous feeling of the public io intimating our satisfaction