South Canterbury Times, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 19, 1880.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2368, 19 October 1880, Page 2

South Canterbury Times, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 19, 1880.

The morbid interest displayed by the people of Auckland in the conduct of a South Sea Islander under sentence of death, is sufficient to engender serious doubts as to whether what we call civilization is not savagery in disguise. We have waited and watched in vain to see whether some sympathetic white man would step forward with some pitying plea on behalf of the untameable and untractable cannibal. But the black outcast has apparently no friends ; no one to urge a word of excuse or commiseration. We are told that he occupies the condemned cell; that he is watched day and night by three sheriff’s officers ; that “ he seldom moves from his bed, except when he is taken into the gaol yard by his keepers for exercise that “ he is in heavy irons ” (a most extraordinary precaution surely for a prisoner in a condemned cell, who only leaves his bed when compelled) but “ he docs not manifest any excitement at their ominous clanking ” ; that he says “ he knows he is going to be killed,” but that “ the only time he manifested any concern was when he was put under the standard to ascertain his exact height,” when “ he winced a little as he thought it was going to be done then ” ; and that the only thing he says, when told of the approaching execution, is “ that they are a long time about it.” These are some of the particulars which are served up to the “ Auckland Herald ” to its Christian and civilised readers, as a palatable feast before breakfast. A good deal has been said and written about the horrors of vivisection,as it has been carried out in the interests of medical science in Great Britian, and especially on the Continent, and to such an extent has popular feeling been aroused thereby that an Act prohibiting wanton cruelty to the inferior brutes has been passed by the British Legislature. But we question if the skinning alive of dogs and cats, or the laying bare of the muscles of rabbits, as carried out by learned professors for the amusement and instruction of students, is one whit more revolting than the preliminary , process to which “Joe” is being sub-

jeeted before he is finally committed to the tender embraces of the hangman. Here we have an unfortunate wretch of a condemned criminal who knows about as much of our laws and customs as be does of our language, but who, like the beasts that perish, instinctively recoils from a violent death, kept in lingering torment, loaded with irons, watched constantly by sheriffs’ officers, awaiting the sad process by which his white civilized Christian masters will despatch him to eternity. Were ’‘Joe” a man - eating tiger, caught alive in some Indian jungle, kept on view, surrounded by keepers, with Ins paws heavily chained, moping in the straw, save when poked in the ribs for exercise, there would be some pity manifested if only for his glossy hide. But this Fijian is not a wild beast. Although endowed with the brute instincts of the savage, he is conscious of his fate, and the deepest interest is taken in his agonising apprehensions, lie is watched eagerly by his keepers as a cat watches a mouse prior to devouring it. From the time of his capture he seems to have been subjected to a species of brutality which in these days of vaunted civilization is surely inexplicable. Captured in the early morning, his forearm broken in the struggle with his capturcr, he is firmly roped, conveyed to town in the custody of four policemen, and not until he is brought up at the inquest the same afternoon are his arms lacerated, bruised, and swollen—at length unpinioned. The Coroner, who we are almost ashamed to add, is a medical man, asked him to suspend his broken arm in his shirt, but this suggestion is followed some time afterwards by the extraordinary observation that it was a pity that instead of his arm “ Joe’s skull was not broken instead.” However we may excuse the warmth of feeling that a revolting sacrifice of human life must excite, it is impossible to arrive at any other conclusion than that a coroner who could, in the presence of a maimed savage with his life on the balance, give utterance to such a cold-blooded expression, was in a frame of mind that manifestly unfitted him for the duty which he had to perform. Altogether the proceedings in connection with this Auckland tragedy are not creditable to the people of Auckland, to the officers of justice concerned, and they are specially discreditable to Dr Philson. Looking at the scene in that Coroner’s Court —the white representative of the licensed to kill fraternit3 r on the one side representing the majesty of the law, and the trembling, cowering, maimed and bleeding representative of the kill-without-liccnsc tribes on the other, we arc tempted to exclaim— And this was in a Christian land, Where men oft kneel and pray 1 The vaunted land of liberty, Where lash and chain hold sway I And we arc tempted to ask the humane reader to study the actors in this strange drama, and say which among the principals was the greater savage ?

The conduct of this New Hebrides Islander from first to last is admirably adapted for the study of those who desire to contemplate the savage and untutored side of human nature. In all his troubles he has displayed in a remarkable sense the quality of absolute truthfulness. He made no attempt to deny his crimes ; on tiie contrary, he has done all he could to facilitate the hand of justice. There is no reason to suppose that he has deviated from the strictest truthfulness when he attributes his attrocious and cowardly deeds to an overwhelming sense of fear, liemoved from the society of his own people, he he has been living apparently in a state of terror. This terror became intensified when he was told by a friend of his employer that “ the whites would hang him to a beam.” Brooding over this his savage nature asserted itself, and under a maddening homicidal impulse he gained possession of an axe and attempted to cut down indiscriminately every white with whom he came in contact. Had he been shot down like a wild beast the deed would have been quite justifiable. In the language of the humane and benevolent Coroner Philson, had his capturer broken his skull instead of his fore-arm “it would not have mattered.” It would have been better for “ Joe,” and better for the colony if he had been killed redhanded. Society would then have been spared the indecency—shall wc say crime—of expiating one revolting crime by the perpetuation of another—of slaying the slayer. For it must be remembered that this “ Joe” is not a murderer in the ordinary sense of the term. His crimes were committed without apparent motive under a ferocious impulse. Although he hasbeen held by a judge and jury responsible for his actions, there can be no reasonable doubt whatever that he acted under the influence of homicidal mania. It is simply a perversion of terms—an insult to the intelligence of the community—to call him a murderer. If this Fijian is a murderer then every wild beast that takes human life is a murderer. His trial is about as farcical as would be the trial of a man-eating crocodile. We feel almost inclined to submit that the main responsibility for the unfortunate consequences of his conduct rests not so much with “ Joe” himself, as with those who originally transported him from his island home, and surrounded him with laws and conditions of life with which he was quite unacquainted. It is said that “ the natives of the New Hebrides (to which ‘ Joe’ belongs) have an evil repute.” Then why, we ask, was this dangerous native conveyed to Auckland ? But for the introduction into the colony of this sample of human

ferocity, the murdered man Rees would ho still alive, a bereaved family would have no need to deplore the untimely fate of their breadwinner, and the colony would be spared the horrible farce of crushing the fly on the wheel bringing the cumbrous and intricate machinery of the criminal law into deadly operation against an unfortunate aboriginal who is just as much responsible for his deeds as a lunatic at large, or a wild beast that has escaped from a menagerie. We are not pleading the cause of this unfortunate criminal, though we cannot help thinking that it would have been far more merciful to have knocked him on the head like a kangaroo when he admitted his offence than to go through the absurdity of a white man’s trial and subject him to the agony of waiting for weeks in a dark cell, covered with irons and watching incessantly the approach of his executioner. We also consider that the way in which simple homicide has been construed into murder is not very creditable to our advanced civilisation, not to say humanity. No doubt in the estimation of the jury and a large section of the Auckland public this blackskinned criminal is outside the the golden rule. The mob that “ gave vent to their feelings by loudly groaning the inhuman wretch who sat cowering and shivering beside the constables ” as he oscillated between tbe Coroner’s court and the lock-up, must be congratulated on tbe example they have given to the woild without, of the intelligence and refinement of a certain section of Auckland society. This “ trembling wretch ” has not only been measured but be has been examined by a phrenologist (whom he no doubt took for the hangman) and since the scum of Auckland evidently thirst for bis blood and the Judge has passed sentence, there is no legitimate reason why they should not be gratified. But in the name of common decency and humanity let him be killed at once, and don’t let him be kept “ cowering and shivering ” like a bullock in the shambles. By a strange perversion of terms he has been adjudged a murderer, he awaits a murderer’s doom, and the cheapest and safest way of getting rid of him is to treat him as an unregistered dog. But after “Joe ” has been “settled” it would be well for the people of Auckland to consider the expediency of taking steps to prohibit the introduction of cheap but dangerous “ slaveys ” from the South Sea Islands. It is bad enough to have the Rev. George Brown hunting savages with the Bible in one hand and the rifle in the other, without putting the colony to the expense and ignominy of killing these unfortunate heathen, after days and weeks of preliminary torture. b} r a legal process of which they know positively nothing.