THE LONGHURST CASE.

Dunstan Times, Issue 1122, 2 November 1883, Page 3

THE LONGHURST CASE.

Mr J. H. Shaw, the well-known lawyer, writesjthus to the Post concerning what he styles the Loughurst craze:--“I confess that tbe case, as put by the advocates of bis innocence, has always presented to me a fata! defect which all the deluges that have been snoken and written have not in the Last degree touche I. With your leave 1 wi 1 state it as briefly a- possible, con-ists J enfy with clearness. The only relevant point raised, so far as 1 have s-eu, in con- j nection with Adams’s trial, or since, is oer- I tain evidence which Dr Collins gave on the second trial, and wh oil it is presumed he could or might have riven on tbe first trial, i From this it is argued that because this ; evidence, if gi-en at ihe fir't trial, waul I have created a dnubt. and have probably se-ured Lnnghurst’s acquittal, therefore the same evidence, when given s me two years afterwards on the second tri.a, is of pre-oi-ely the same weight and cogency as if given two years before, and mu-t I e’akeu to vitiate the entire evidence for the pro securion of Loughurst. Tho fal acy. it seems to me, need only to he pm. on clear ground to expose its essentia- rickeliness. The matter is in a nutshell. Now. one of two things must be true—either Dr Collins, at the trial of Longhurst, believed he could giv i important evidence tending to his acquittal, or he did not believe that. If he did believe it, and then stool quietly by while a man who might he innocent was convicted and sentenced to penal servitude and two floggings, and did not promptly volunteer his evidence, what term in the English langnag - is 100 strong to characterise the Ctm-Inct of Dr Collins? But if, on the other hand, he did not at the time of Longhurst’s trial so believe, how came he long af erwards at Adams’s trial to discover that he did possess this essential knowledge of the facts? This is the dilemma which, if I had been on the jury at the Adams’s trial, I should have submitted to Dr Collins for his solution ; and until he had most effectually cleared it up T should not have attache ! to his evidence the value of one straw. Nor do I now. No one will, 1 presume, accuse me of helping the Min'stry line a lame dog over a stile. But right is right, and truth is truth, and humbug is humbug 1 believe there has been an immense quantity of the last ingredient in the whole of this fishy business. For the sake of the unfortunate young man himself, let W" sav that I strongly feel it is a great pi y the persons who moved on his behalf should have adopted the peculiar tactics they did. The course they followed must, if successful, have inflicted a deadly blow on the .administration of criminal justice in our Courts. And these persons, carefully shunning such a dangerous issue, thrown the young man's case unreservedly mi the gracious mercy ot th“ Crown, as baring already sufficiently suffered in any case, 1 have no doubt that the result would have satisfied the claims at once of public justice and of public feeling Unluckily, they have so awkwardly fallen fon! of justice as to make it almost impossible and fatal for mercy to temper it.”