TOO LATE!

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 2, 27 June 1911, Page 5

TOO LATE!

TAHI KAKA'S EXECUTION. GOVERNOR AND BARRISTER. MR. JELLICOE'S PROTEST. By Telegraph.—Press Associatiei. Wellington, Last Night. Mr. E. J. Jellicoe, .barrister at law, to-day received the following letter from his Excellency the Governor, to which he has forwarded the reply appended:

x June 23, 1011. e Sir,—l beg to inform you that I have to-day received a telegram from 6 His Majesty's Secretary of State for the Colonics, requesting me to inform you that His Majesty received your petition for the commutation of the death sentence passed on Tahi Kaka, and that His Majesty commands that you should be referred to my Government, to which has been delegated the prerogative of mercy.—l have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant, ISLINGTON. Governor. \ _. June 26, 1911. Sir,—l have the honor to acknowledge receipt of your letter, bearing to-day's Wellington postmark, but ; dated by you from Government House, Wellington, on the 23rd inst., wherein you inform me that you had that day received from the Secretory of State for the Colonies His Majesty's command that I should be referred to your Government if I desired to invoke the prerogative of mercy for the Maori lad Tahi" Kaka. I assume from this communication (1) that His Majesty could not have hecn aware when he communicated his gracious command to you that your Government, on the very day it became known that I had cabled petitioning for the commutation of the death sentence, actually fixed the execution to take place at eight o'clock on the following morning; or that immediately the execution was so fixed I informed you of the petition, and asked you to delay the execution for a few hours to enable the King's pleasure to be known; or that you ignored my request and dispatched the boy, and never so much as acknowledged receipt of my communication. (2) That His Majesty's commands evidently contemplate that your Government, as delegates of the prerogative of mercy and sole /arbiters of life and death, would afford me an opportunity of applying for the exercise of that prerogative, and would consider any proper grounds I might desire to urge. How can your Government now allow this to be done, seeing that with such very, unseemly haste the life of the boy has heen taken, and what is the use of your letter of to-day communicating to me His Majesty's* comands? I have the honor to request that you will communicate this, my reply, to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, for submission to His Majesty, in order that His Majestcy way be made aware of the treatment my petition haa received, and thft manner in which his delegates of the prerogative of mercy'exercised that prerogative,in the case of a defenceless child of seventeen years of age, who was only one degree removed from the savage, and whom the jury, on the evidence before it, had, in fact, recommended to mercy. —1 have the honor to be your obedient servant, E. J. JELLICOE. PROTEST AGAINST CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. Timaru, Last Night. At a Unitarian service last night, a resolution was carried unanimously protesting against the execution o"f Kaka. The minister (Rev. Chappie) said capital punishment was no deterrent, and in this case allowance should have been made for the inherited tendencies of the accused, a member of a race lately savages. The mover of the resolution dwelt on the latter point, arid said the execution was morn horrible than the murder.