The Standard. (PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY, THURSDAY, AND SATURDAY.) SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1874.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume II, Issue 132, 7 February 1874, Page 2

The Standard. (PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY, THURSDAY, AND SATURDAY.)

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1874.

“ We shall sell to no man justice or right: We shall deny to no man justice or right: We shall defer to no man justice or right.”

The tragedy that befell this community some two years ago, when two innocent, unprotected, females were within an ace of being barbarously murdered, and to which we now refer as the Shukea tragedy—is likely, so we hear, to re-awakeh an interest in the prisoner’s personal security which it was thought was set at rest for ever, or, at any rate for many years to come. It has now assumed a phase which the sensational writers of our day might construct into a novel of a highly flavored kind. They might —we do not say they should —elevate the position of this victim of ungovernable lust into that of a hero ; or, at least, a martyr to the laws of his country, which —notwithstanding the sympathies of his friends, and the romantic fact of a fortune awaiting his return to the outer world—are as millstones round about his neck.

lieport sayeth that property to a considerable amount, £lO,OOO more or less, has come to Shuker, and that the news has, and not unnaturally, acted upon him in such a way as to give him hope of liberty, but which, umil that liberty conus, if ever it does come,will also proveatormenting spectre—acurse to hisexistence. So large, indeed, is his desire to be free that rhe continued supplications he sends to those whom he happened to know in better days, are becoming rather a nuisance. He has recently written again to some gentlemen in this district, imploring them to use their influence in obtaining a remission of his sentence ; and we understand that so persistent have been Shuker’s endeavors to create sympathy, th.it his is now said by some to be a “ hard case,” and that Mr. Ormond the Superinto Bring the matter under the notice of the Government if any one will undertake to move in the matter. The effort to believe this is a great deal “ harder” on our innate consciousness of what is right, and due to society, than the penalty that has most righteously fallen upon Shuker, therefore we withhold any more remarks at the present stage ; but we are glad to hear that the gentlemen written to in Poverty Bay object to have anything to do in the matter.