South Canterbury Times, MONDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1881.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2467, 14 February 1881, Page 2

South Canterbury Times, MONDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1881.

If our readers will turn to our fourth page they will find the particulars of a Police Court scene, which we submit has only to be copied into the press of civilised countries, in order to convince the outside ivorld that our laws are barbarous, if not fiendish, and that they are administered by inhuman monsters. There is hardly, w t c believe, a father or a mother in this colony so thoroughly callous but that a perusal of the details will make the warm blood rush to their cheeks in indignation. If we read of such a scene occurring in the presence of a cannibal tribunal in Central Africa, there would be a universal cry of “shame,” and money would be freely subscribed and as freely lavished on heathen-taming soldiers, and evangelising agents.

The blood of the striplings, who were sentenced to be flogged, confined in criminal cells,- and then treated as juvenile slaves for a terra of years, would cry aloud for vengeance. If such atrocities happened in Russia, or say in E.ngland would we not be tempted to exclaim, Thank God, we are in New Zealand. Our families, at all events are safe from this horrible cruelty and degradation !” Hue because this crime—fori ,wc hold this display of Magisterial severity to be nothing less than a crime—is perpetrated at our doors, and almost in our midst, the. people are asked by certain superior inttligences to believe that it less revolting and barbarous than it looks, and that the punishment indicted is necessary, wholesome, and even mild. Still, we must not be astonished. Nana Sahib, though be filled the wells of Cawnpore with butchered innocence and loveliness, bad his black admirers, and he would be a singular despot even in New Zealand that would fail to find an apologist.

The cn'me for which Mr 1. N. Watt, Police Magistrate of Dunedin, ordered several little boys between the tender ages of nine and twelve years to be flogged in gaol with a birch rod, imprisoned for a time, and then committed for a terra of years to the Industrial School—the heinous offence for which this triple punishment was pronounced, was that of stealing a lew apples from an orchard. Another Magistrate would probably have discharged them with a mild rebuke, and left tlie rest of their punishment to the discretion of their parents. But this model reformer treats them as it they were wild beasts, and ho docs just the thing to destroy every vestige of innocence in their nature, and make them declare war with their species for the rest of their lives. For if anything is calculated to convert children into hardened irreclaimable ruffians, it is an acquaintance with the gaol, the Industrial School, and an abuse of magisterial power. Between the offence and the punishment there is neither relationship nor proportion. The one has been trivial, the other enormous. The offence was hut a common freak of boyhood ; the punishment is, we believe, almost unprecedented. Nor is this display of magisterial ferocity on the part of Mr 1. N. Watt an isolated instance of the kind. Were it an exceptional illustratration, we should put it down for the result of temporary insanity, or the consequences of an overdose of unripe apples on the magisterial liver. But Air Watt is addicted, apparently, to relieving his pent up feelings at the expense of little children. He has been known to order a mere infont to he, flogged in gaol for playing with a sixpenny ball that had been removed by an older child from a toy stall; and if we remember properly, he ordered a flogging and imprisonment to he administered to a couple of children ivho, fearing a punishment at home, had been found sleeping in a brewer's outhouse. iSo flagrantly outrageous have some of his sentences on children been, that the Minister of Justice has had to he appealed to, and he has hud to be snubbed. On the other hand it is a notorious fact that the. dangerous adult criminal who has the good fortune to secure a browbeating counsel has a for better chance of escape than of conviction at the hands of Mr Watt. The degraders of youth, the vile profligate women who haunt the lowest kennels of Dunedin, are treated at the hands of this worthy with so much leniency that they laugh at his sentences. They go to gaol for a few hours, enjoy the advantages of a temporary sanatorium, and then return to their loathsome abodes refreshed and re-enervated. In this way crime and that which produces it, instead of being repressed with a strong hand, is kept festering in the midst of the community.

This lias been going on for years and it is a grave scandal. Has the community no redress ? Can no one be bold responsible ? Is the administration of justice in one of the principal centres of the colony to remain a by-wordand a reproach for ever? We venture to say that it would be better to have an Indian idol occupying the central place on the Bench than to have justice maladrainistered as it is. How long are children, for the slightest cause, to be tortured, shocked, and insulted, while depraved women and the worst of thieves and vagabonds are treated with the utmost leniency ? Is the criminal law to be so administered as to create crime rather than repress it ? Apart altogether from sentiment—leaving the cruelty of gaol floggings and imprisonment out of the question—is it desirable that the incipient larrikin should be transformed into a dangerous pest ? The opinion of Mr Watt is entitled to as much respect as his judgments which arc constantly wavering. His curative treatment might do for the slave States of America in the olden times, but will it be tolerated in a British colony ? Have the Bible-in-schools party nothing to say about the Watt cure for larrikinism ? Experience, which is before any opinion, shews that children may be brutalised but they cannot be reformed or improved by beating or imprisonment. The degradation, apart from the physical suffering, destroys all selfrespect and the disposition that might have been bout is broken—the child is ruined for life ! We have a society for the prevention of cruelty to animals ; a society for the prevention of cruelty to children and their parents is necessary to keep Magistrates of the I. N. Watt stamp in proper restraint.