The Globe. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25, 1877.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 884, 25 April 1877, Page 2

The Globe. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25, 1877.

There are but very few people in the colony at the present moment —thanks to the activity of newspaper telegraphic correspondents —who have not heard some version or other of the fracas which took place last week in Christchurch between two of the bestknown members of our ]N : ew Zealand community. In their eagerness to minister to the popular craving for sensational items, some of the correspondents in question appear to have rushed to the wires, fortified with so-called facts based upon very slender premises indeed ; and hence most distorted notions of what actually did take place found circulation among people at a distance. We do not desire to enter in any way into the merits or otherwise of the painful " difficulty " —as the Yankees have it —to which we allude. Besides, they must now have been pretty well decided by the publication of the apology and reply made by the actors in this unfortunate tragedy. But we feel bound to say a few words in reference to the extraordinary mode in which, last Saturday, the Bench thought proper to deal with the information for an indictable offence laid by the Hon. W. Bobinson against Mr. Henry Bedwood. When the defendant was called upon for his defence, the prosecutor's solicitor, Mr. Grarrick, stated to the Bench that the malicious character of the injury received by his client had been withdrawn, an ample apology had been made by the defendant, and that, as the gravamen of the offence, as set out in the information, had been removed by the withdrawal in question, he would beg that the information he dismissed. And the Bench, Avithout hesitation or .second thought, at once acceded to the request, and a man —a gentleman at least —charged with having committed a gross and unprovoked outrage in a public street, in view of the police even, was without another word n.Howed to depart unpunished! And here two questions suggest themselves. Birst, was the assertion made by Mr. Grarrick, and which the Bench so blindly believed, correct, that the prosecutor was satis-

tied that the malicious ingredient as set out in the information to I constitute an indictable offence, <li< ! not, after all exist. And secondly, had the Bench any legal right to dismiss the case at first sight, without taking any evidence upon it. Mr Robinson's letter to Mr Redwood, and to the publication of which we have referred, evidently disposes of the first query in the negative, as it clearly states that out of regard for many members of the defendant's family, he. the prosecutor does not intend to press the charge in the Police Court, and for that reason, but fur no other, does he accept the apology. As to the summary dismissal of the information by the Court, we confess that we fail to understand by what process of Jaw such a summary mode of dealing with it can be justified. In taking cognisance of criminal charges for offences of an indictable nature magistrates hold a position absolutely similar to that of a Grand Jury. The Bench stands purely as a Court of preliminary inquiry, without any judicial jurisdiction whatever. It is there to inquire whether a prima facie case against the prisoner can be made out, or not. If in the mind of the Court there be prima facie evidence that the offence set out in the information was committed by the person charged, then it is bound to commit the latter for trial at the Supreme Court, which alone has jurisdiction to adjudicate. In the case in question, nothing of the kind was done, but, on the contrary, th e request that th e inf ormati on be withdrawn was instantly, and without any hesitation whatever, acceded to. And well might people ask : —Are there two laws in this law-ridden country, one for a certain class of people, and a second for a less favoured section of the community? Had the prosecutor and defendant belonged to a different class, would not the police, having witnessed one individual striking the other senseless, to the ground, have compelled instant legal vindication of so gross an outrage upon the laws of the land ? A hair's breadth, one Avay or the other, it is stated, and the assailed, in this lamentable case, would have gone to that bourne where money is of no possible avail; and, if so great a misfortune had accidentally happened, would the criminal information, that must have followed, been taken tip by the police or not ?