The Kenilworth Advertiser. — 1876-03-18 (Kenilworth, Warwickshire, England)

THE 130Y-FLO§IGEISTG MA4I.IBI4RATE. The Daily _Aiwa, referring to the case ol° the magis:rate who flogged two boys for poaching, says: "No ane who knows the English boy, in whatever rank of dfe, can doubt what choice these young poachers made without long debate. Of course they ' took the lickmg.' Boys always do, if by any chance they have the option, for in the boy nature there is still that strange savage readiness to endure pain which has been displayed in the self-inflicted tortures of tie Mandan Indians and at that altar of the Laconian Artemis. Boys, in short, are in the hunter stage ' a existence; rabbits they will pursue, and a beating they will take with a grin. When Tom Brown was caught by the keeper, in Mr. Hughes's charming story, he was sent before the doctor, anit the measure was meted to him which Mr. Wilberforce dealt to these rustics. Very likely some bUC.I notions as these were in Mr. Wilberforce's mind when he toos Ihe most unfortunate step of flogging the lads. Whether or no they were flogged with cruel severity is really not essential. The fact remains, as the Lord Chancellor said, that he, being a magistrate, 'used the threat of sending the boys before a bench as a means of inducing them to submit to personal chastisement.' Tire is the gist of his offence, and his conduct was certainly unseemly, and would bring nothing but discredit on the administration of justice. If the boys were really flogged to the effusion of blood, they were cruelly treati-d, though not more so, perhaps, than many a victim of loading, or perhaps even of a 'sixth form licking.' The jury which gave the lads damages of .4:15. ss. probably did think that there was great severity in the flogging, for s jury not unnaturally supposes that 1:15 weans a barge sum to the sons of a lauourer, a sum that would compensate for very grave ill-treatment. But all this has little to do with the essence of the affair. The boys might have been as severely flogged at Eton, perhaps, and the younger boy may have said that he 'didn't mind it,' showing a manly adherence to the boyish point of honour; but all this is apart from the true bearings of the case. Mr. Wilberforce acted with extreme want of judgment when he made • distinction in his own mind between himself as a justice of the peace and himself as an offended owner of land and rabbits. No justice of the peace has a right to place the ' wild justice of revenge ' on one side and the law of the country on the other, and then to ask the criminal to make his own choice. Agricultural labourers are not people to make delicate distinctions between one bench on which Hr. Wilberforce sits and another on which he does not sit. They imagine that one bench is very like another in these cases, and that there is a great solidarity of feeling among the landed gentry. To the bops, Mr. Wilberforce's alternative had all the force of a threat, though he says it was not. one, and they determined to be flogged by a justice of the peat*, notacting quti justice, rather than to brave the vaguely terrible wrath of justices in their official capacity."  The Duke of Morrone was killed by a gunshot wouud an the 21th of last month, when returning n lasseb,ck  i': 73;";Eateau of Castel-Morrone. Th.; servast who accompanied him declares that he did not see the murderer. . •