CRIME.

Evening Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2217, 15 June 1870, Page 2

CRIME.

To the Eilitor of' the Evening Star, Sir, — Our boast and pride of a sparse criminal population, asserted to arise from our very liberal ideas in connection with the educational question, naturally leads us to watch the quarterly criminal sessions with interest, and every good citizen must endorse his Honor Mr Justice Chapman’s opening remarks this sitting—if only from the fact that lie (the good citizen) lays the “Mattering unction to his soul,” that he contributed to bring this desirable state of things about. But if education cultivates and improves the ill-regulated miud of the ignorant class—this same education advancing in the higher grades, perfects a more dangerous ability with greater cunning, rendering the offence less difficult to accomplish, and that done, making detection and proof correspondingly difficult; and so it is, we find the fashion* able (?) crimes of forgery, uttering, and em* bezzlement (all of which are almost without the reach of the so-called lower orders, who must content themselves with offences such as petty larceny, drinking robberies, &c.), are on the increase, there being at least four indictments in the criminal calendar for June, One. case being that of a William Gray, charged with forgery and uttering under what his Honor called peculiar circumstances, inasmuch as the accused did not with his ownhand manipulate the forgery, but through some ingenious scheming completed it to his personal profit, through the agency of persons innocent of his design. This man, there can be no question, was very properly found guily ; and his Honor, when sentencing the prisoner, said the offence was com, plete when the money was obtained from the Bank, and with the recommendation of mercy passed sentence of two years, with hard labor. This man was of imperfet education being of the laboring class—was not known to the police, and it was his first and only offence, Kext in order under the same head comes the trial of John Creagh, against whom the grand jury a)so found true hills—an equivalent,' 1 apprehend 1 ) 1 eqiial to ordering him for trial on the face of the depositions submitted to them, What follqwg ’ Jqffu Chcagb, with his cull tjvation and experience as one of the devil’s own,” pleads guilty of misdemeanour or embezzlement, being, as he well knew, the most insignificant of the crimes with which he stood charged j and further pleaded not guilty to the alienee of forgery, and in fact remaining charges; and for some reason or for none—perhaps because he was a person of superior attainments and wore a good suit of clothes, and passed for a gentleman, used the facilities which were witlpn his reach, and which he did not fail to take advantage of—but certain it is. 'The Crown Prosecutor, acting as I presume upon delegated functions of the Attorney-General, declines ts produce evidence against the prisoner, thus ignoring the direction of the grand jury, on which his Honor, as the law directs, ordered a verdict of acquittal; and after some very able remarks, denouncing the crime of gross breach of trust on prisoner’s part, sentenced him to three years, wfith hard labor, for the crime he had pleaded guilty of—the lightest sentence the law allows.

Nov/, sir, comparing these cases, I think it appears very plain that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor —vl est, the poor or uneducated prisoner for the first offence, suffers more heavily in comparison than the accomplished scoundrel, who, with facilities at his finger ends, commits a series of crimes extending over twelve months, all of which wepe well known and before the Court ; this existing fact being within the knowledge of his Honor, who would have remembered same, on pissing sentence, sup. posing that prisoner had been found guilty by a jury on first case produced by the Crown, ar,d which proceeding I contend iu the ends of public .justice the Crown was in duty bound to adopt. Then and then only I respectfully submit that the Crown in its mercy might have withdrawn remaining charges, as is sometimes done, still main* tabling the majesty of the law, With these remarks, sir, 1 beg to conclude, hoping that this may come before our Executive while considering extended educational measures, who iu their wisdom may so re-, gulate the working of the law as to convince all that an impartial administration is as surely and indiscriminately meted out to broad cloth as fustian op proof of guilt 1 am, &c., Mcspivuc-AM I , Dunedin, June I t, 1870.