§ SIR EDWARD GREY (Northumberland, Berwick)I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Homo Department whether his attention has been called to the fact that Joseph Thornton and John Haigh were, on the 4th of March, at Durham, sentenced by Mr. Justice Day to six and seven years' penal servitude for assaulting a gamekeeper; and whether he is aware that, though the men in question were found poaching by the gamekeeper, it was close to the road, and in the day time; that no previous 175 convictions were proved against them; and that no mow dangerous weapon than a turnip was used in the assault; and, if so, whether he will make further inquiries with a view to considering the justice of the sentences?
§ *MR. MATTHEWSI have seen a newspaper report of this case from which I gather that the gamekeeper was brutally illtreated by the prisoners, who knocked him down, kicked him, tried to strangle him, and heat him about the head with a turnip until he became unconscious and received injuries from which he was still suffering after four months. The Judge, in summing up, called attention to the fact that there was no provocation whatever. Unless the hon. Baronet is in a position to place before me any new facts which were not before the Judge at the trial, I should not feel justified in interfering with the sentence.