The Manawatu Herald. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1906. LAW VERSUS JUSTICE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 3723, 22 November 1906, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1906. LAW VERSUS JUSTICE.

The law allowed an Auckland magistrate the bare privilege of sending a human fiend to gaol for six months with hard labour the other day. The fiend ..in question slapped his three months old baby, lacerating it on the back. It eventually died. The man was let off on the charge of manslaughter and convicted of aggravated assault. A year or two ago another tough customer assaulted a woman —a full grown athletic woman who proved - herself fairly capable of dealing with the assaulter. It was recognised that the man fairly earned the sentence of six years he got. The woman was not damaged. She did not die like the Auckland infant. But if the law allowed any Court to give a man six years for the assault on a woman, why does it not allow a magistrate to give a man six years for an assault subsequent to which a perfectly helpless baby dies ? •

* * * The other day for the atrocious crime of netting trout a man was fined twenty - five pounds, Of course the law had every right to

prevent him from using unsportsmanlike methods of catching this very sacred —and cancerous fish. Last week a Dunedin publican was fined £$ for attaching a false trade description to whisky. He was deceiving the whole of the public who had any dealings with him, but a modern magistracy with that weird logic that is the modern magistracy’s chief charm concluded that deceiving the public wholesale was five times a less crime than catching fish which the whole people are taxed to supply. The law of the land keeps out the burly European who might become a good settler, because he cannot write English. The law is lifted to allow a mob of light-fingered unwholesome sraellful gipsies to come to the Exhibition, The law pounces with great vigour on people who have “no visible means of support’’ but it allows these said gipsies to come along and rob and steal.

The; law in Chrstchurch sent a bookmaker to gaol for a month last week —it had already fined him fifty pounds—for laying odds on a racecourse, but a magistrate ruled a day or two before that a bookmaker who had laid odds in the passage-way of an hotel was not in a “ place ” and let him go! A dunderheaded law led the magistrate to remark that had the bookmaker betted in the bar of the hotel he would have been guilty, a hotel-bar being a “ place ” within the meaning of the Act. If you can find anything sillier than this we would like to hear about it. The law in Carterton fined a private person five pounds last week for daring to invade the sacred rights of the lawyers by drawing a simple lease- No lawyer has yet been imprisoned for stealing five pounds from a client by doing half-a-crown’s worth of work for him.

The law listens to the blithering of a policeman and on his representation takes a«’ay the pension of a septuagenarian. The law has never yet kicked a policeman out of the force for using unfair means to make a prisoner incriminate himself before trial. The law proposes to preserve the life of the people of this country by insisting on “pure food.” 1 The law still allows shameless ‘ ‘ Madames ’ ’ to advertise their noxious potions. It also does not come down on the city chemist who under the deceptive description of “ anti-fat pills ” are helping to keep this country from having a population big enough to cope with the Asiatic when he gets to holds with the white man.

The law insists that mid-wives shall be registered but the law isn’t careful to see that the unwanted infant is kept alive. There have been many cases of infjnticide in alleged “homes” lately. The keepers have been punished when it is too late. The law, if recent cases are to be taken as examples look upon sheep stealing as a worse crime than an aggravated assault that leads to death. It looks upon the preservation of a trout as a higher duty than the preservation of a woman’s honour, it doesn’t recognise the Jew trust person as a law-breaker, but it sends the infinitely smaller offender, the bookmaker to gaol. The law is putting down gambling by fining bookies and by allowing the totes to expand with every race meeting.

Judges blither away and moralise before a mental decadent who has committed a social crime and preach sermons that do not alter the criminals brain power in the least. The asinine law gets into a perspiring condition over an alleged indecent picture and inflicts heavy fines, but in the place where the laws are made it allows the public to gaze on a body of legislators some of whom are always drunk. The sight of a drunken legislator is in our mind a sadder spectactle than the sight of art lady more or less draped. The law restricts the sale of liquors after licensed hours and on Sundays. The law does not appear to have found out yet that the city chemists do a roaring trade in alcohol at all hours. The law in short is badly administered in New Zealand and at ncN|ime so badly as at present. The magisterial views seem to be guided by the magisterial liver and the social circumstances of the lawbreaker. Be that as it may the shrieking disparity of sentences and fines of late years in our beautiful country call for strong comment, but no comment we could make on the most recent cases of injustice would be adequate.