§ MR. O'DONNELLasked the Secretary of State for India, If his attention has been called to the fact that when the Native assessors at the trial of the Hindu prisoners accused of complicity in the Salem riots refused to find the prisoners guilty on the ground of the insufficiency of the evidence, they were denounced in open Court by the European Judge, Mr. Wigram, as having given "a perverse verdict," which "convinced him that they cannot have conscientiously considered the evidence;" whether the Native assessors to courts of justice in India, who are appointed under the Criminal Procedure Act to give their opinion to the court upon such evidence as may be produced at a trial before them, are liable under any law to have opinions thus given in the discharge of their official functions controverted by the presiding judge; and, what stops the Government intend to take to protect Native assessors in the discharge of their legal functions; and also, whether the attention of the noble Marquess has been called to the fact that the presiding judge, Mr. Wigram, before proceeding, on his sole responsibility, and without any jury, to sentence a number of Hindu prisoners in the foregoing case to various 220 terms of penal servitude for life, and for long terms of years, made the following explanatory statement of his reasons for passing such severe sentences:—
The sentences I am about to pass may appear severe, but I shall append to my judgment a recommendation that, should the feud between the Hindus and Mohammedans be buried for ever, and should Salem again assume its prosperous and peaceful condition, the Government should, after two years, revise the sentences as to them may seem fit;under what Law was Mr. Justice Wigram empowered to make the subsequent conduct of persons out of doors a ground for diminishing or increasing the punishment of sentenced prisoners; and, if such a Law exists, whether he will undertake to propose its repeal?
THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTONIn reply to these two Questions I think that I have already said that I have no information except from newspaper reports. I find that the prisoners referred to have appealed to the High Court at Madras, where their appeal is now pending; and, under these circumstances, I think it would be undesirable to enter into any discussion on the points raised.
§ MR. O'DONNELLasked whether it was only Indian prisoners who could be sentenced to penal servitude for life without the intervention of a jury; and whether it was the fact that in the case of European prisoners no such power was vested in a single Judge; and, whether, if such were the case, the noble Marquess would propose to repeal a law which inflicted such gross inequality of treatment between different subjects of the Crown?