SENDING THREATENING LETTERS TO THE QUEEN.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1147, 14 September 1882, Page 2

SENDING THREATENING LETTERS TO THE QUEEN.

Whoever is inclined, from the lenient treatment received by the lunatic Maclean, to infer th t our Queen may be insulted with impunity, will have their judgment corrected by a sentence that has just been passed on a youth named Albert Young, formerly a telegraph clerk on one of the railways. This unhappy individual wrote to her Majesty, under cover to her private secretary, demanding a sum of £2,000, and threatening to shoot her and members of her family if the demand were not complied with. He takes the trouble to point out the disproportion between the amount demanded and the privilege of not being shot. “ Assuredly you will not hesitate to send what will be but a moiety out of each pocket if all the members of the Royal family subscribe among themselves for the required amount, rather than endanger so many precious lives. Ask Prince Leopold how he would like a bullet put through him on his wedding day, of whicn I wish him many happy returns, and die a lingering death like Garfield ?” The only question for the Jury to determine was the authorship of the latter, and they decided without leaving the box. In passing sentence, the Judge observed that the practice of sending threatening letters was considered in the abstract, a dastardly and cowardly act; but the particular offence of threatening our belovea and respected Sovereign was heinous beyond the resources of his vocabulary to qualify. Dean Ramsay tells of a Scotchman who, as often as he got to such a pitch of indignation, went out to the middle of the street and “ swore at lairge." That kind of relief is not consistent with the dignity of the English Bench, and Mr Justice Lopes had to content himself with candemning the wretched criminal to the heaviest punishment the law allows-—lO years' penal sesvitude.