THE BARBADOES RIOTERS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 4939, 20 January 1877, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE BARBADOES RIOTERS.

The royal mail steamer Pera has brought news from Barbadoes. The special commission for the trial of the rioters of last March and April was opened, the presiding Judge being Mr. liushingtoo Phillips, of Natal, whom, jt will be remembered, Lord Carnarvon had sent out in the fear that Mr. Justice Packer might possibly be biassed. Speaking broadly, the net result of the trials has been to Justify the Colonial Secretary’s view of the comparative pettiness of the Barbadoes disturbances, and to inflict an indirect but strong censure on the local authorities who had refused bail to the majority of some 450 prisoners. The unhappy detinues had been detained for periods of six or seven months in a crowded and mos; noisome prison, all this being before trial. Mr. Lushington Phillips, who had nothing to fear and nothing to expect from the Barbadoes plantocvacy, discharged 296 prisoners ami liberated forty-five on their own recognisances. In twelve cases the grand jury ignored the bills, but of this anon; fifteen persons failed to surrender, nineteen were sentenced to penal servitude, and thirty to imprisonment, with hard labor. The oidy serious offences of which any of the accused were convicted we e a solitary case of incendiarism and the attempt to murder Colonel Clements, the InspectorGeueral of Police. On the whole matter two points should be emphasized. As the Special Commissioner pointe lly observed, most of the prisoners had been incarcerated before trial for a longer term than they could legally have been after a summary conviction for larceny; nor must it be forgotten that many of the accused would perhaps have not been convicted at all before a sensible stipendiary magistrate. Again, all the bills which charged white men with firing at negroes were ignored, and it would be interesting to know whether this class of bills amounted exactly to the twelve mentioned above. The significance of the ignoring of a bill by any grand Jury against an accused person is that there is not even pt-ima facie evidence against him. Yet so poorly did a cool and impartial Judge think of the wisdom or equity of the Bridgetown grand Jury that-he severely censured the very men whom he, was compelled ,to discharge ou their finding. '".The issue of these trials is a far more eloquent censure on the Bax-badiau dominant class than any despatches or Parliamentary! 'Speeches. A heinous ‘crime, however, that of the murder of Corporal Belmanna, has been committed in the neighboring little island of Tobago, the only other one to which the spring riots had penetrated. Forty-two men were accused, and of these sixteen were condemned to death, and the remaining twenty-six to peual servitude for life. Governor Hennossy afterwards commuted all the capital sentences, and reduced them, it would appear from the telegraphic report, to relatively short terms of penal servitude. Here Mr. Hennessy was simply wrong. There are at times cxcu.-es fur rioting, but murder is another thing, and wo may depend upon it that some at least of the sixteen should have been made examples of.— English paper.