Page 4 Advertisements Column 4

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume V, Issue 158, 7 July 1870, Page 4

The Maqrjr pnisop,ers,' $C| jaw number, jfpunrf guilty at thej^eceiit special" Criminal of the Supreme Court, of levying war against the Queen, jWere- brought up on Saturday morniug for sentence, in the same order in which they had been tried.? His Honor, after they had been, asked .in ihe usual form if they had any thing to say why sentence should [ xidt be i pronounced on them according to law, said, the punishment provided by the law of England" for such offences as they had been proved, and, confessed themselves guilty of, was deaihy but the same also allowed the. Queen to alter that sentence, and he might tell them that he believed the .government would chancre their senten es into' as light a punishment as was consistent with thg' demands of justice. The Government would also take the trouble to enquire into, their different degrees of guilt, and regulate the punishment accordingly He especially dwelt on the case of Tamati Tarapau, whp.mt he considered to be most, culpable. His' Honor then passed sentence of death on 1 them, at the same time expressing his satisfaction that a new act, passed by the^ Legislature, enabled him Jo pnss the sentence without, the addition of the revolting barbarities which were attached to it under the old lnw. Futterford, the Norfolk murderer, who stuffed a dying. m»n's mouth with mud, has been reprieved, a huge burn, having so swollen his neck that hanging would have pi'oduoed a horrible scene.. of torture. The reprieve is unavoidable, bufc it is one more proof of thejinjustiee consequent on our system of execution. Hanging is the most cruel of deaths for a light man, a man With strong 1 vitality, or a man with a bull neck, all of whom are apt to struggle lor many minutes. The only death which is the same for all, which involves no cruelty and yet impresses the imagination, is death by the bullet, military in fact. If it is unconstitutional to employ soldiers, a row of barrels, fired by a concealed executioner, would he as effective. — Spectator. Looking Forward, — Without being accused of spiritist hankyp.anky or Madame Siecle-ism, we may perhaps exercise our fancy upon the future, and draw upon an imaginary " History of the Ancient Australasian Republic " (taking a good stretch while we. are about it). Open it at random : " Therefore, lam reluctantly compelled to agree with -Dr. Wombat, when he says (An tiq. Nov. Zeal. vol. xxxviii., p. 1001), that there cannot be doubt, on the evidences, that the said T. Kooty was a myth. Fungay, in his History of the Ancient Moas, vulgarly, but. erroneously termed Moarris, has collocated no less than ten distinct accounts of the. death, of this T. Kooty. Rejecting- one of these as undoubtedly false*' there remains nine. Fungay declares;. {that, ..after the. most minute examination and comparison of the records preserved both in Geelong and in the ancient capital, he cannot feel himself justified in throwing a shadow of doubt over more than two of these accounts. Here, then, we,; have at least seven distinct accounts, . at different periods, of the violent death (violent in every case) of this T. Kooty. How, I say, can we still persist in the belief that such a person ever existed? In the face, too, of the suspicious rhyming with 'sooty ' and ' booty ' which I have pointed out ? {Ante p. 4142), The galvanic process of resuscitation was not discovered until at least 200 years afterwards (say r between 2070 and 2075), and we have no warrant whatever for allowing the possibility of any new lease of existence at such a remote date as that in which this wonderful character is supposed to have flourished. Hard it is, I know, for: popular delusions to be dispelled by the sledge-hammer of relentless criticism, but ." At this -point we may awake. — Melbourne Aye. Twenty-one shillings' worth of pork — A guinea-pig. ' ' ' . Geological question — Are ten carat gold watches turnips ? Why is a deutist like a farmer ? — Because he pulls out stumps and fills achers. After a battle between two celebrated pugilists, an Irishman made his way to the chaise, where the one who had lost the battle had been conveyed, and said to him — "How are you, my gay fellow? Can you see at all with the eye that's knocked out?