AN'IMPORTANT JUDGMENT.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 2136, 5 June 1920, Page 4

AN'IMPORTANT JUDGMENT.

An important judgment, and one which will no doubt be cited in New Zealand in the future, has been rendered in Britain by the House of Lordsj the final court of appeal for the Empire. A man murdered a girl of fourteen. During the trial he put forward the defence that at the time of the commission of the crime he had been drunk', and, therefore, not responsible for his actions. Ihe man was found guilty and sentenced to death. An appeal was allowed, .however, and eventually reached the House of Lords. It was heard by a committee composed of the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Haldane, Lord Buckmaster. and four other Law Lords. Ihe judgment they have rendered is to the effect that drunkenness is not an excuse for crime; that voluntary drunkenness must even be considered as an aggravation of the crime. A man who, by his own voluntary act, debauches his will (by becoming drunk), should be uo better situated in regard to criminal acts than a sober man. A lien one considers the extent to which liquor robs a man of his self-control, and the number of .crimes which are committed while the subject is under the influence of drink, one begins to realise why so many earnest and thought ml men and women arc working for prohibition. “COOKIES” AND “SQUATTERS.” At a meeting in Carterton a few days ago, Sir Walter Buchanan, took strong exception, as he has done on previous oeeasions, to what he described as the “insults” offered to farmers in the references frequently made to them as'“cockatoos,’ or “cow-spankers.” Singularly enough, he made no reference to the term “’squatter,” winch is commonly* applied to the. holder of a large estate. Sir Walter is hyper-sensitive' in this matter. The average farmer does not care a rap by what name he is described, provided he gels the highest market prices for his produce. There are thousands id. men in the country who would be proud of the opportunity of being classed “cockatoo.” And there arc not a few who would endeavour to bear the opprobrium of “squatter, so long as they had unencumbered broad acres standing in their name. There is not the slightest odium attached to the terms “cockatoo” and “squatter,” and the farmers themselves freely use the expressions when describing the various classes of people who occupy the soil. The terms “settler” ami “farmer” may' he a little more refined, but they are by no means as expressive. Age,