The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1886. SENTENCED TO DEATH.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1429, 10 December 1886, Page 2

The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1886. SENTENCED TO DEATH.

Terrrible as it is to contemplate such a wholesale forfeiture of human life as is involved in the fulfilment of the sentence of death passed by Mr Justice VVindeyer on the nine men found guilty of participation in the Mount Rennie outrage, no one can deny the justice of that sentence, and few will be found to question the necessity of its being carried out. For even those who are opposed to capital punishment, even for the crime of murder, must be constrained to admit that the experience of Switzerland clearly demonstrates that no punishment other than that of death has the like terrors, and that, therefore, the punishment of death has a greater deterrent effect than any other. Switzerland, some years ago, abolished capital punishment with the result that, after a fair trial, it was found that murders multiplied and public opinion compelled the restoration of the death penalty. It is true that it is possible to go to the other extreme, as, for instance, when men were hung by dozens for sheepstealing and all sorts of minor offences, those offences were much more common than they are to-day, and it would seem that it is possible to produce a reckless disregard of the value of life on the part of numbers of the people coaresponding with the low estimation in which it is held by the law whicli inflicts death for trifling causes. But while such laws as these defeat their own object, it does not follow, as we have seen, that the death penal y can be wisely dispensed with altogether. Indeed it would seem to be necessary for the safety of society to insist upon st least one portion of the Mosaic retributive law—that which lays down that “ Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed,” and there are circumstances and conditions of society in which that other portion of the same law which decreed death for offences against virtue evidently mast also be carried out. Such circumstances and conditions appear, unhappily, to obtain in New South Wales, in the chief city of which colony, according to Mr Justice Windeyer, there is “a class worse than savages, lower in their instincts than the brutes below us ” and whose crimes he rightly characterises as “ a disgrace to civilisStion.” His Honor, after expressing the abhorrence of all right-thinking men of the brutal conduct of which the prisoners before him had been found guilty who, like a set of savages pursuing some wild anima’, hunted down a poor girl whom they found defenceless and alone, and after most abominable treatment left nearly dead, went on to detail a list of crimes of similar atrocity which had come under his immediate notice in New South Wales during the past few years. He said, “ A few years ago an outrage was committed by a number of young men upon a girl in the neighborhood of Paramatta street, but by some mischance a gross miscarriage of justice took place in the acquittal of the men. False evidence was always ready, too ready to throw J its protecting shield around those of the i class to which ihe prisoners belonged. ! This was followed by an outrage upon J

a youug woman at tiie North Shore, and the perpetrators of that crime escaped the penally of death on account 1 of their youth. After this an outrage took place upon an old woman in the neighborhood of Ultimo, and he had not the slightest hesitation in saying that a miscarriage of justice took place there in the acquittal of the men. This case was followed by another, where a wretched woman was done to death somewhere, in the locality made infamous by its crime, where the present outrage was perpetrated. Again a mis carriage of justice took place, all of those concerned being acquitted. This was succeeded by another frightful outrage, where a wretched creature was found lying naked like a dog in the street under circumstances of outrage too horrible to mention. Only one of the wretches concerned in this crime was brought to justice. Only last yeai he tried eight men for a concerted outrage upon an old woman under circumstances too disgusting to refer to, and they escaped the death penalty.” He expressed his belief that tbe present crime was the outcome of the past, and that this culminating outrage had been brought about by the immunity from the death penalty which the class to which the prisoners belonged had so long enj :>yed upon the ground of their youth. In these circumstances His Honor warned the prisoners that, notwithstanding the: recommendation to mercy on account of youth made by the ju'y, there was no room for them to hope that it would be acted upon, and advised them to prepare to meet their Maker. He added that “ after all that had taken place of late years in the colony, the time was come when a terrible example must be made of those who seemed restrained by no fear, sense of shame, or the odium and contempt of their fellows. Con duct such as that of the prisoners could only be restrained by the fear of death —the fate which awaited the prisoners.” In view of this solemn expression of judicial opinion, there can be no question but that the sentence will be allowed to take i.s course, and that the nine young men convicted of sharing in the dreadful affair of Mount Rennie will expiate their crime upon the scaffold. Let us hope that ■ the warning thus given will have the effect of preventing others from imitating their brutal and lawless conduct, and that New South Wales may never again be the scene of such another terrible crime.