JABEZ BALFOUR'S RELEASE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8153, 4 June 1906, Page 3

JABEZ BALFOUR'S RELEASE.

We wonder wbufc the victims of tbe-Liberator frauds think of the foas male by the Lundou Press over the release of Jabez Baltour from gaol after twelve years' imprisonment for a crime which brought misery to thousands. The Daily Mail devotea columns to bis release, every petty detail of his movements Ijeing ueoorded, together with his impressions of the new world which he entered when he left Parkhurst Prison, and a STRANGER FROM ANOTHER COUNTRY might eauily receive the impressiou that Balfour was a man who had suffered martyrdom rather than a man convicted of a particularly heartless crime. Not that he admits bis guilt in the least. lie maintains that the exeoratioo POURED ON HIS HEAD is all a mistake, say 9 bo is profoundly aorry for the misery caused by*the failure of bis projects, and is working on a book which, he says, will tell the world the truth. While in gaol, Balfour bohaved in AN EXEMPLARY MANNER,

and earned the greatest possiblo reduction of his sentence. Ho has come out with some very emphatic opinions on the system of treating criminals in English gaols. The monotony, he declares, is directly eonduoive to insanity, and he is certain that but for bis determination TO KEEP THIS BRAIN working he would have lost his reason. "If any dear friend to me were sentenced to penal servitude for life. ... I would rather that be were hanged." For the educated man it is the most cruel form of intellectual torture. The close study of criminals, of prison life, and Spanish FORMED HIS RECREATION, and we are to have the observations detailed in book form, of one who claims to be the best living expert on the British penal system. lie declares that he has come out of prison absolutely penniless, and at •the AGE OP SIXTY-THREE will start the world afresh. "My mind is irrevocably made ap. Daring my thousands of days' imprisonment Ijhave reconsidered the whole business in all its aspects, both with regard to the transactions themselves and as to what would be •becoming for me to say with regard to them. Many of my most intimate friends—and, thank God, I still have many friends— have oiged me to make this the fkflt employment of my liberty. My friends know the facts, and they KNOW HOW OUTRAGEOUSLY they have been distorted and exaggerated. In the political and financial portion of my book I shall devote some chapters to the Liberator group, aud to the circumstances which led to the disaster, of whioh the Press aud the public as yet know nothing." A any rate the energy and determination which carved him out a career years ago have not deserted him, for an inteviewer mentions that within 72 hours from bis release bo had completed 22,000 words of bis reminiscences. Tn the meantime there are still a thousand victims of the frauds on the relief fand.