New Zealand Spectator, AND COOK'S STRAIT GUARDIAN. Saturday, June 8, 1850.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VI, Issue 506, 8 June 1850, Page 2

New Zealand Spectator, AND COOK'S STRAIT GUARDIAN. Saturday, June 8, 1850.

Thb length to which our report of the trial of the prisoners charged with the murder of Ellis extends necessarily compels us to be brief in our observations on the case. "With the justice of the verdict all who attentively consider the evidence must agree, since the whole weight of the testimony conclusively points to Good as the perpetrator of this atrocious crime. In this instance it is to be observed that, as often happens in similar cases, by a species of infatuation on the part of the criminal the principal evidence against him, the body of the murdered man, was left on board the vessel, when it might have been so easily otherwise disposed of, to bear witness against the murderer, and it is im> portant to note this, since it would have been difficult, if not impossible under the circumstances, to prove a murder had been committed unless the body had been found. Thus, by an inscrutable Providence, are the evidences of guilt often unwittingly furnished by the criminal himself, so surely, sooner or later, does punishment follow on the heels of crime. Raro antecederitem scelestum Deseruit pede Pcena claudo. The present case furnishes another illustration, if any were wanted, of the evils of convictism, and the state to which this colony would have been reduced if the settlers had not unanimously resisted Lord Grey's proposal for the introduction of convicts into New Zealand. Good was a runaway convict from Van Diemen's Land. He had previously been charged with robbery in Wellington, he had only been liberated from gaol a fortnight when he closed his career by the commission of this barbarous and revolting murder. The records of the Supreme Court shew that the great proportion of crimes committed in this settlement are by escaped convicts from the neighbouring penal colonies, and, if we suffer so much from their proximity, we can readily imagine what the social condition of this colony would have been, if it had become the receptacle of the outcasts and felons of the mother country.

A meeting of the Executive Council was held yesterday, and in consequence of a report that Ellis had been seen alive on the afternoon of Sunday, 17th March, several witnesses were examined by the Council, but the report proved to be without any foundation.

Want of room obliges us to defer to our next number a letter seat to us for publication by Capt. Pulham of the Government Brig Victoria, with some remarks which we wished to make in connection with the subject to which the letter refers.