Two Opinions.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume IV, Issue 612, 25 May 1891, Page 2

Two Opinions.

[wbllindton times.] The law of criminal libel as administered in this country is a relic of the barbarous days when the liberty of the Press was tempered by the pillory and the whipping post, the impossible fine, and tbe weariness of interminable imprisonment. Those things would now be impossible. What happened to John Baldwin at Gisborne ought to be just as impossible as those punishments of a. benighted period of our history. He was right, but not being able to legally prove his case when he was tried he was condemned to imprisonment and died in- gaol [shortly after a release had been granted]. That unhappy story is the outcome of private prosecution, which all reasonable men have long held ought not be permitted to put the law of criminal libel in motion. The death of a perfectly innocent man, a man who ought to have been rewarded for defending the public interest, not punished like a felon, ought to be enough to have the law improved in this respect. The offence really was that be was not able to prove that which the Audit Office was unable to discover. [p.B. UEnILD, sept. 5, 1888.] Slow-footed Justice has at length overtaken the most scurrilous scribe that has ever disgraced the Press of New Zealand. . Baldwin’s libels were of an insidious character, being mainly of malversation of public funds, and charges of this kind, whether they have the basis of truth or not, impose upon the gullibility of a vile class of men who are unfortunately found in every community. . . . We think that the public have great reason to be thankful to Mr John Bourke for ridding the district for a time of a dangerous nuisance and enemy.