THE Grey River Argus. PUBLISHED DAILY. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1873.

Grey River Argus, Volume XII, Issue 1412, 8 February 1873, Page 2

THE Grey River Argus. PUBLISHED DAILY. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1873.

i In the absence of amateur entertainments on the stage, or of those bell-men who make day aud night hideous in the streets, there are few situations in which persons of a melancholy turn of mini can find better substitutes as sources of sadness than the interior of the Resident Magistrate's Court. It is there that the solemn farce can sometimes be seen enacted to perfection, and to the mere spectator the entertainment has the superlative advantage of being cheap. The Government provides the centre figure, in the person of the Magistrate, and, accustomed to the solemnity of some of the farces in which he is called upon to act, he is admirably successful in impressing an audience who may sympathise with the aphorism that "speech is silver, silence is gold." There are also provided police officers, various in grade, but similar in stature and discipline, and in demeanor sentimentally solemn. Per contra, there are the lawyers, who, undisciplined after the manner of police, lighten the scene a little by being " everything by turns and nothing long" — now solemn., and then comic, according to the character of the case or the confii dence of their clients. One may not be sure of always finding reporters wasting valuable time in listening to cases which, according to local practice, are permitted to drag their slow length along at a snail's pace, with nothing discoverable at the end of the journey j but one is sure of finding another lounger besides himself, and if that lounger's physiognomy is not lugubrious and elongated, he is evidently a stranger, and unaccustomed to the amount of melancholy derivable from regular attendance. To "fill the cup" of the spectator, he only requires to imagine the other actor in the solemn seene — some goat, some cow, some horse — creatures which are, fortunately for themselves, ignorant of the painful impression which their peccadilloes produce upon the official mind, and, fortunately for others, not present in Court. Sometimea the other party to the picture is a man — one of that clasa whose inhumanity to their fellows has " «n*de countless thousands mourn." There was a m#n before this Court the other day whose case may, even at the present stage, and without prejudice to anyone, be referred to as. forming an accession to the numtar of solemn farces

of which Resident Magistrates' Courts are the scene. Committed though the man is for trial in a superior court, his case maybe referred to in other interests than his, and especially in the interest of improving the mode of procedure to which the police pretend they are confined when acting upon "information received." It may be referred to also in the interest of awaking some friendly interest in him, he being an old resident of the Coast, and at present destitute of any funds for his defence. The man's name is Andrew Morrison, a name which will pro bably be recognised in Hokitika and further south as that of a humble individual, but not unworthy of some friendship, in the event of it being the case that he is overtaken by illness. Some of the circumstances associated with his case are these, and in referring to them we repeat that we consider ourselves entitled to refer to them, as in no "way prejudicing whatever case may be raised for the prosecution or the defence : — For some time past the person referred to attracted the attention of those who know him best, by conversation and conduct which were altogether incompatible with sound reason. His eccentricities became so numerous and manifest that, a week ago, a resident of Greymouth who had excellent opportunities of judging of his condition, and who is not altogether a novice in such cases, made it his special duty to inform the police that, in his humble opinion, the man was not fit to be at large, and to request that they should, if they saw reason, kindly take him into safe keeping and for medical examination. The informant of the police stated at the time that it was almost a certainty that, unless the person in question were so dealt with, he would come to be arrested criminally. Before the police could well take any action in the matter, these words became true. Information of another kind was subsequently given to the police, and upon it the man was arrested, charged with obtaining money by false pretences. The police preforred—perhaps correctly, according to their code of duty — to proceed upon the second information ; a prosecution was proceeded with, with the usual solemnity, and with the police acting purely as prosecutor ; and the accused was committed for trial at the next sitting of the District Court. His defence was reserved, and upon it or the accusation we can, in the meantime, have nothing to say- There is the less reason to say anything, even if it were permissible, since the sitting of the District Court is close at hand. There is, however, one anomaly in such cases tD which attention may fairly be drawn, especially as it is not the first case of the kind on the Coast. Supposing it to be the case that a man was, or was suspected to be, of unsound mind, and was without regard to that fact, or in ignorance of the fact on the part of the inferior Court, committed for trial on the day after the sitting of the District Court, how manifestly unfair, if not inhuman, would it be to commit a man so situated to a common prison, when other and proper provision is made for dealing with such cases. It is true that by some particular process the Government maybe the usual amount of "the law's delay," but with the police in the position of prosecutor, this musb needs rest with a man's friends ; and, if a man is without friends, what then 1 There would obviously be not only a miscarriage of justice, but an injury done by the community, through ita representatives, towards an individual, and we all know the aphorism as to an injury done to the meanest subject. With no steps taken to move the Government, such a case goes before a jury, and of course a jury is, more than a committing magistrate, the proper body to decide as to a man's sanity or insanity when technically guilty of a crime. In how many cases, however, do we find that instead of criminal charges being brought where apparently criminal actions were committed, the individual concerned is simply remanded for medical examination. There was certainly a case lately at Maori Gully where this was not done, but, by the results, the exception in that case proved the propriety of the rule, and, in all cases in which a magistrate is called upon to commit, there would seem to be propriety in doing, what is done in some countries — placing all ascertainable facts before him as the authority upon whose action prosecution follows. With regard to this particular case, whatever may be the true circumstances pro or con, these will come before a jury, but so will the accused, and, as we do not consider it derogatory to these columns to mention facts for the information of a prisoner's friends, we mention, for the information of this prisoner's friends, that, whether he deserves it or not, he requires their assistance. i