THE RELEASE OF THE MURDERERS OF MR, FULLOON.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 14, Issue 741, 6 December 1869, Page 4

THE RELEASE OF THE MURDERERS OF MR, FULLOON.

(From the Evening Post.) The announcement that the murderpis of Mr Fulloon have been pardoned and set at liberty, will prove anything but pleasing 10 the Colony, and will detract much from the pleasure afforded by Mr M'Lean's .success in the Waikato. It seems "that, like the laws of the Modes and Persians, it is unalterably determined £>hat whenever Maoris are concerned justice shall limp on one foot. The murder of Fulloon and the crew of the Kate was an act of cold-blooded, deliberate ferocity, without a single extenuating circumstance to be discovered by the keenest philo-Maori casuist, and committed by a party of the same wretches who had hanged Mr Yolkner, drunk his blood, and eaten his brains a few months' previously. If ever men deserved to die for their crimes these wretches did Commuting their sentences into imprisonment was unpardonable weakness, and now, after some three years' incarceration, to turn them loose is simply an announcement that the administration of justice is a mockery and a farce. Does any man in New Zealand believe that had these murderers been Europeans they would have been reprieved either from the gallows or from penal servitude 1 We need not ask—we require only to point to the case of Walter Tricker as a proof how even-handed our justice is. There is little doubt—as the Gross says—that the release of Te Hura and his companions will afford satisfaction to the Kingparty, but it will be a satisfaction mingled with contempt for the weakness which allowed it. A good deal is said about the importance of capturing Te Kooti, but were he in Wellington jail at this moment it would be safe to take long odds that he would escape hanging, and after a time be restored to the " bosom of |iis family."