Spirit of the press.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 7, Issue 359, 19 March 1866, Page 1

Spirit of the press.

THE EECENT TEIAL FOE MUEDEE AT AUCKLAND. (Prom the New Zealander, 10th March,)After a most careful, considerate, and patient trial, extending over three days, the jury have brought in a verdict of wilful murder against James Stack, and with that verdict we do not believe there will be beard one dissientient voice. '‘The train of circumstantial evidence all pointed to the one fact, and with that evidence it would have been impossible for the jury to have come to any other decision than that which they recorded. And we are not astonished to find that tbe prisoner received that sentence stoically—for a man who could commit the dastardly crime of which he was guilty, and then live for nearly three months in the same cottage that his victims had occupied—and on the very land in which those victims were hidden—must have a heart which nothing short of a miracle could touch. We have never, in the whole course of our experience, heard of a case where so much brutality was exhibited towards tbe innocent victim’s of a murderer’s devilish cruelty—for to have accomplished his fell purpose, the convict now under sentence, must have fallen upon his benefactors ruthlessly in the night, and slain them one by one with tbe hammer, of which evidence was given, but which could not afterwards be found. In the dead of night must this fiend in human shape have approached his mother-in-law, and, while she lay wrapped in slumber, must he have inflicted the blow which at once deprived her of reason and of life. Then creeping like a noisome snake to the room, in which his younger victims lay, this man of iron purpose must have struck his relatives as they slept, taking, probably, the eldest first, and, as in the case of tbe mother, depriving him at one dull blow of that fair life breathed into his nostrils by the Creator. With the middle boy there appears to have been, perhaps, a sudden awakening, for we find that, besides the awful blow upon the head, the cruel knife had been drawn across the neck—aud so his young life passed away. The fate of the youngest—John—is wrapped in mystery; but there can be no doubt that he shared a death in common with his brothers, although his body has not been recovered to tell the same sad tale. Then what must have been the feelings of the murderer, alone with the bodies of his four helpless victims. Plotting, no doubt, as to the disposal of the bodies and the removal of all foul stains, the arch fiend who could commit such a crime would doubtless calmly look unmoved upon the havoc he had made, and even plot fresh deviltries for the time to come. But, all cunning as he was, he over-reached himself, and when the officers of justice were once on his track it was difficult indeed for him to escape. The motive of a crime so black is buried in the darkest obscurity, for it is hard to believe that the obtaining of a few paltry pounds would induce any man less than a demon of the blackest dye to commit a crime of such foul atrocity ; and now that the sentence of the law is passed, the sooner society is rid of such a wretch the better.