THE CONVICT BUTLER.

Temuka Leader, Issue 251, 1 May 1880, Page 2

THE CONVICT BUTLER.

The following appealed a? a letter in the Otage Daily Times. Sib, — I am glad yon have had the courage to express your s- ntiments sodecidedly in tips case—first on the 19th inst,, and then on the 27th:— Accepting your definition as the correct one of what constitutes the duty of an exponent of the public mind , I

can’t sec that you honestly bad it in your] power to do any thing else. You must have expressed your opinoin, and expressed it as you did. If ever the public mind was undivided and at on •, it was as to the guilt of this man. And strengthened by the Universal, unmistakeably expression of it heard by you on every hand, with which your own opinion, entirely coincided, what else could your “ consensus of the thoughts of many minds ” be ? It was a high duty, I truly think, fulfilled. I see another journal, on other tack less plain than yours, bluntly admits that “it is deeply to be regretted that the man who in a 1! human probability committed 'one of the foulest murders on record has escaped the halter.” And he is right ; for while the most jealous care should be exercised in favour of the innocent, surely, as you say, “it has much the function of a Crown prosecutor, and of a judge to use all diligence that a guilty person shall not escape, as it is the duty of a juiy to weigh evidence and not to punish an: innocent man.” But—and this it was my purpose to express on taking up my pen —from how many difficulties that hedge round a c sc of this kind would there have been deliverance had, we had here the Scottish’ verdict nut proven ! I am not conversant t, with Ijhe legal modus. Operand i that environs the. prisoner in the country, where such verdict may be written again'st' him. But under its eye till fully satisfied And; palpable to everyone, is the Justice and security of a verdict so fair to the prisoner and securitive to soc.ety.—l am, &c. —J . R.