THE Evening Star. PUBLISHED DAILY AT FOUR O'CIOCK P.M. Resurrexi. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 1877.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2534, 19 February 1877, Page 2

THE Evening Star. PUBLISHED DAILY AT FOUR O'CIOCK P.M. Resurrexi. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 1877.

When called upon to act as judge,- no matter in how unimportant a case, it is often found a task of some difficulty to give a perfectly jusfc decision ; it is harder ten times to give one that will please everybody. Nor is this difficulty decreased when, instead of acting as a judge or umpire between friends to decide such a thing as a bet—or a " prize "as it seems beta may now be named —a man i» called upon to act as judge in the case of an alleged charge of law breaking, and if necessary to decide against the accused to award the exact amount of punishment suited to the case, no more and no less. The fact whence this difficulty arises is this, that, the laws now, b.esidei. being I written with a verbosity which renders them unintelligible to some and inexplicable by others, are very far removed from that state of perfection which they were when Hooker, the judicious, wrote in his " Ecclesiastical Polity:" "Of law, nothing less can be said than that her seat is the bosom of God." Besides this, men look on the application of law with different views regarding its penalties. Some think that the penalty exacted for the transgression should only be in precise proportion to the damage occasioned by the crime. Others hold that the penalties affixed to the breaking of the law were meant to act as a deterrent to others as well as to punish the evil-doer, and therefore the punishment should be sufficiently heavy, not only to i punish the actual culprit, but to make others very careful how they offend in like manner. It is no doubt a matter of the utmost difficulty, even if n6t of absolute impossibility, to frame laws which in their working would punish the transgressors in equal proportion whether they be rich or poor. A poor man and a rich man commit the same offence, lei; us suppose. Each is punished in the same way by a fine, &c.' The rich man pays and departs; the amount very likely is of no moment to him, no more than he would mind losing over a few games of billiards or at an evening card-party—very likely not a twentieth part of what he would stake on the result of a horserace. The poor man has exactly the same sentence pronounced upon him, but with a very different result; if he is able to pay the fine it is as much as he can do; it signifies to him the paying away of those savings which he has been weeks, perhaps months, accumulating, or, if he can't pay, he has to go to prison, and his family, deprived perhaps of their only bread winner, have to live j how and #vhere they can until his term - has expired, and he comes out branded as a gaol bird to seek for work where he can, and very likely not able to find it. Hence the inequality of the laws. Their "just application," as some call it, has this against it, that on some the punishment falls too lightly; on others, though the punishment be the same, it sits too heavily to be termed just. We are not in writing this trying to back up what has been termed a sliding scale of justice, by which, in the case of fines, a man might be punished in proportion to his income, though we should like to see this taken more into account than it seems to be when fines are inflicted, but simply to show the difficulty under which magistrates and judges labour when they have to administer the law, and yet lcn,ow, as sometimes they must know, that the case is one of peculiar hardship. To narrow down these general remarks about the difficulty of administering the law aright, we refer to a recent case heard at the Thames about alleged peach stealing. This case came off on Saturday before two J's.P., and resulted in the conviction of the offender, about whose guilt there could be no reasonable doubt, though it is quite true that no one actually saw him take the peaches from the tree. This want of ocular demonstration seems to have made a profound impression on the mind of the Thames Advertiser, who, taking up the cudgels in defence of the culprit in a vain endeavor to make out that his punishment surpassed his sins, writes, " there was no proof of the actual theft of the peach, but the little fellow was found getting over a fence enclosing some peach trees, and one rolled out of his waistcoat." It will be noticed that the language employed leaves it doubtful whether a peach tree, a fence, or a peach rolled out of his pocket; the grammatical construction would leave us to imagine it was a tree, but on the other hand we are told he was a little fellow, still

the peach trees may hare been little also, and there was evidence that the fence had suffered. The Advertiser, apparently, does not believe in circumstantial evidence, and were ; magistrates to act on the line of action that paper would lay down for them, we imagine that punishment, even for very great offences, would be very rarely awarded. A murderer, for instance, does not generally choose the place and time where and when he is most likely to be seen to despatch his victim, and yet if he were seen getting over a fence surrounding a garden where a man was lying dead, and a pistol was to roll out of his pocket, we think the case would very likely go hard with him even though there was no " actual proof " that : he was the murderer testified to by anyone who had seen him do it. The Advertiser seems anxious to raise a wail of pity for the youth by calling him "a little fellow who scarcely knew any better," and points out how hard it is that he should be punished for stealing a peach in a country where they grew wild;" and further likens the punishment of Hollis to that inflicted on a laborer in England who stole a turnip. Regarding the maudJin cry over the " little fellow who scarcely knew any better," we can only say, that if at the age of 14 he aid not know any better, it is more than time that he was taught; and the endeavour to palliate the offence by talking about a country where peaches grow wild, is ab* surd. Peaches growing on trees in gentlemen's gardens, properly fenced in, pruned, and on which time and money are expended, are very different things from peaches growing in a wild state on some piece of uncultivated land, which if not picked by some wayfarer would stand a chance of being left to rot. Besides this there is the annoyance of having broken fences —as was the case in this charge—to admit fowls, perhaps goats, to come in and do more damage than two or three little fellows of 14 who scarcely knew better, and the trouble and expense of having these fences mended. Further it seems there is really, a necessity for punishing these minor thefts in a way to act as a deterrent to others. It is not from the number of boys that are detected and brought to justice that we can form any idea of the number of thefts that actually occur. When fruit is ripe and flowers plentiful we venture to say that over fifty thefts—for such they are—are committed for everyone punished, and they seem still to be on the increase. On the last day of last month three boys were convicted of stealing plums at Kirikiri, and received the same sentence as that inflicted on Hollis, the Inspector in charge of the police stating to the Magistrates that the police had many complaints made to them of fruit stealing, and he thought one conviction would have a salutary effect. The case quoted by the Advertiser of the man who received a sentence of seven days for taking a turnip bears no analogy to this, and is utterly beside the question altogether.

It will be remembered that some time ago among the representations sent to the Central Board in Auckland concern* ing the edncational requirements of this district one was that the Thames ought to have a member to represent the district at the Board. Promises were made that if the school committees here nominated a gentleman the Central Board would do their best to take iuch steps as would lead to the appointment being made. The justice of the claims of the Thames was, we believe, admitted by all. The School Committees met, and Mr JDaviea was nominated, but when the result was made known to the Central Board, instead of taking such steps as would lead to the appointment being made, the answer is.that the Board have no power to nominate any person as a member. This, too, in spite of their specious promises of doing this and that for the Thames. We certainly ought to have a member on the Board, and we hope that the matter will not be allowed to rest where it is.