South Canterbury Times, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 24, 1880.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2189, 24 March 1880, Page 2

South Canterbury Times, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 24, 1880.

It will bo perceived, by the news wbicli has reached ns from Dunedin, that some further light has been thrown on the atrocious crime recently perpetrated in that unfortunate city, the details of which have sent a thrill of horror throughout the whole colony. Blood has been found on the shirt of the man Butler, and a chain of circumstantial evidence has been developed by the police sufficiently important to warrant his committal for trial on the charge of murder. It would be unjustifiable and indecorous, when a life is at stake, even though the life is that of a convicted criminal of the worst type, to sa} r one word that is calculated to unduly influence public opinion against the accused, and we will not further allude to the crime in question. But we feel impelled by a deep sense of public duty to invite the attention of the administrators of the criminal law to the fearful consequences to the unoffending which misplaced, mistaken lenity, too frequently implies. A great deal is said and written by well-meaning busybodies, in the Legislature and outside of it, about the treatment of criminals, the necessity for classification, the want of improved gaol accommodation, and so forth. It would be well for societj l -, we think, if some of the solicitude which is devoted to the reform of the irreclaimable, and the alleviation of the undeserving was diverted in the direction of an unprotected public. The charit}'- that is ex tended towards the confirmed criminal usually produces, in the long-run, a revengeful recompense, and the community, or some unfortunate members of it are the sufferers. We are not advocates of harshness —we do not believe in torture but we maintain that for the protection of society, criminals must be dealt with firmly. There is something detestably imbecile in the maudlin sentimentality of the average philanthropist, whose peculiar weakness is gaols and penitentiaries. As a rule this sympathy is the result of a superficial acquaintance with the subjects of their attention. Instead of being guided by the opinions of practical authorities, they rely on theory, forgetting that the habitual criminal is a plausible hypocrite, whose studied knavery sets theory at defiance. The caged lion submits to bo patted —he is all humility in bondage, and licks the hand of his keeper—but let him go loose and we speedily find that all his original ferocity has returned. In the same way the confirmed criminal is the gentlest creature imaginable in durance vile; but although seemingly reformed, he is simply subdued ; let him go at large and he will immediately relapse into his old habits and prey upon society as before. Probably it never occurs to the amateur prison reformer that to be kind to the criminal is to be cruel to the community, and that society is almost certain to suffer keenly by his disinterested and good intentional zeal on behalf of the gaol vagabond. Colonists, who have given this question the slightest attention, must have perceived that the greatest scourge on earth is the reformed criminal. This may seem a paradox, but costly experience proves its accuracy. Burgess and Sullivan were reformed criminals, Weechnrch, of Pentridge,was a reformed criminal; so were Price, Scott, and others who have realised a felon’s doom only after sacrificing the lives of the unoffendingTo the same class belongs the man now lodged in the Dunedin Gaol, on suspicion of having perpetrated an outrage o a peculiarly aggravated and diabolical nature.

W r e can only hope that tire terror which this Dunedin tragedy has inspired and the circumstances surrounding it will turn the merciful tide, which, through the agency of the legislature, was setting in towards the convict clement, in a more useful direction. It should also lead the administrators of the law to reflect whether they are not really patting crime on the back, when they inflict a light sentence on the irreclaimable criminal. For we maintain that the individual, whose hands having been dipped in crime misuses his subsequent opportunities for reform and abuses his liberty by relapsing from the path of

honesty, is irreclaimable. He is an enemy to society, and to set him at large after a light sentence is only to encourag-e his viciousness. The outraged are entitled to justice, but this they cannot realise while pit}'is extended to the undeserving. Society will never be properly protected until something like uniform sentences are imposed on criminals, and the administrators of the criminal law, are enabled to perceive that the letting loose of habitual offenders on society is as dangerous, from a public point of view, as the letting loose of a menagerie of wild beasts. In the interests of humanity, the repeatedly convicted criminal should invariably realise the full benefit of the criminal law, and if, for the safety of human life and property, it is desirable that he should spend the whole, or the greater part of his life in gaol, no attempt to curtail his sentence should be tolerated.