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Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 2979, 12 January 1881, Page 2

His Excellency the Governor has been pleased to commute the sentence of death passed ou Wi Warepa to imprisonment for life. No reasons are given in the telegram for this exercise of clemency. Wi Warepa, a Chatham Islander, murdered his wife, a white woman, by beating out her brains with a pair of tongs. He excused his own savagery by accusing his wife of infidelity. * Careful enquiries that have been made at Chatham Island have failed to give color to the accusation. Warepa was tried at Christchureh, found guilty, without recommendation to mercy, and sentenced to death. We should like to know on what grounds His Excellency has exercised his prerogative. If it is to be an understood thing that for the future capital punishment will not be carried out there is nothing more to be said. If, however, the Chatham Island murderer owes bis life to the possession of a dark skin the public sense of justice is outraged. In the days that have gone we had enough and to spare of the sickly sentimentality that holds to the belief that there should be one law for the black and another for the white skin.