LIONEL TERRY.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIII, Issue 1872, 29 September 1906, Page 3

LIONEL TERRY.

DEMANDS TO BE EXECUTED,

PRESS ASSOCIATION Welling'ou, Inst night Lionel Terry, under date, “ God’s own Country,” Sept. 21, writes to the Now Zealand Times, enclosing correspondence he has had with the Government. In a long letter written from Sunnyside mental hospital, August 24, to the Premier, ho sets out that the death sentence passed upon him had been substituted for one of imprisonment for life without his permission, and the alteration lie clearly and definitely refused to accept. This he had notified the Minister of Justice in a former letter, and also had laid the matter before the late Premier. To the former he says he received an unsatisfactory and evasive reply, and to the latter received no ack-

nowledgmcnt. He describes his committal to unristchurch asylum as a disgraceful and cow ardly subterfuge. His letter to the Premier concludes: ‘‘The law admitting race aliens into this colony is either a just and beneficial law or an unjust and injurious law. If it held to bo just, I hereby exercise my right as a British subject in demanding that I shall bo exo-

mted in accordance with the sentence passed upon me at my trial. If it bo icld to be unjust, then by the same right [ demand its abolition and my own free Join. If however, I as a British subject am refused my right to justice, then I on my part must refuse to remain a British subject, since I cannot oven pretend to respect the nation which witli-bolds justice from its people, nor is it reasonable or natural that I should.” Replying on August 20th, the Premier stated that the matter was under the consideration of the Minister for Justice, to whom it had been referred for consideration,