The Daily News THURSDAY, OCTOBER 29. JEFFREY JUSTICE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 262, 29 October 1908, Page 2

The Daily News THURSDAY, OCTOBER 29. JEFFREY JUSTICE.

For stealing lialf-a-dozcn sacks at Auckland, an old man, 03 years of age, on Holiday was sentenced by Sir. O. C. Kettle, S.M., to three mouths' imprisonment at Jit. Kucn gaol! Shades of "Bloody Jeffreys''; will justice be satisfied? Temper justice with mercy, forsooth, in ours an age of persecution? The heinousness of the crime, the safeguarding of the law-abiding public, the reforming influence of tile prison all demand that desperate criminals of this nonagenarian type must be segregated ■ and confined behind iron bars. But for three months only! And that, too, tt- . ter tlie criminal investigation department had been ransacked with a view . to having the old fellow committed as I an habitual criminal; ill otlivr words, i for the term of his natural, life! The

insatiable nmw of justice lust its victim by a "Haw" in the ):nv, which provides tlmt a person lias to l>e convicted on four separate occasions, for theft, before lie call be committed as an habitual. And unfortunately for the demons of .persecution, old maa McCullough had never been previously convicted, oil indictment,.of stealing. What a travesty 011 our bloated civilisation, 011 the vaunted majesty oi our judiciary, that such a scandalous crime, tor such it is, could be perpetrated In a Court iu this country! Well migiu i-t. 1 uwd pct.v pilferer express a doulit if there were a pel-mi of li;s e.g.' in tile whole of Ureat ilritam or Ireland, who has been m> har.-Jily dealt with as to be sent to prison. Were there not an extenuating circumsuinee, three inionths in gaol lor so paltry a crime as the misappropriation of half-a-dozen empty sacks would be nothing less than an outrage worthy of "Llie middle ages or the "JJloody Jeffreys" already referred to. Justices' justice is often enough a reproach, but we have yet to learn of « member-of the Great Inlaid failing l» follow the dictates of common humanity. Egregious legal blunders i»v the score can be charged to their account, but the humanitarian instincts of the greatest blunderer would prevent him from perpetrating bo tin-Christian an injustice as that fotf which all right-minded people will hold the Auckland .Magistrate, responsible. It may he argued, of course, that 111 the circumstances it was charitable to find the old man an aljode, even in gaol. But we think few will endorse that view. Surely something couli have been done for a tinie-seaieu veteran who preferred his. liberty to even the semi-restricted freedom of a charitable home. Is prison the only alterna tive to '.the public benevolent institutions? We venture to say that had this unfortunate occurred m Taranaki. puWk* indignation and pnvate charity would liavc ensured that no aged veteran in indigent circumstances would he forced into gaol, lo our mind the case is nothing short of brutal, a disgrace to the Bench, and it not protested against, a reproach to our vaunted humanity.