The Liberal, Volume I, Number 39, 25 January 1893 — THE POLITICAL WHIELIGIG. [ARTICLE]

THE POLITICAL WHIELIGIG.

Less than eight months have passed since the arrest and trial in this city of many of its citizens of whom R.W. Wilcox proprietor of whom paper, and V.V. Ashford, were alleged to have been the leading rits. The offense of those malefactors consisted, as per the evidence for the prosecution, in organizing to resist a projected attempt of the then Queen and her supporters to impose upon the country an illiberal and despotic constitution. When their heinous offense became bruited about, there arose from the throats of many of the good people of this land a cry for their blood. Such deviltry could not be tolerated in this Christian land. It was even stated that some of the criminals had suggested in a meeting, that, under certain hypothetical conditions, it might become necessary to use arms. That was decisive. The political pirates should be crucified. But they were not crucified. Some of them were promptly acquitted, and the others were subsequently released because the not over sensite government of the day were ashamed to longer restrain them. It so happened that the Judge who "sat upon" them, and their case, was no other than His present Excellency, Mr. President Dole, of it Provisional Government. He held, in effect, that an overt act of treason a capital offense, could be and had been committed by mere words. His Excellency has resigned his place on the Supreme Bench to assume the headship of a revolutionary government, whose every act is treason against the government which it deposed and displaced. Deposed sovereigns sometimes return to thrones and power. If it should be so with her recent Majesty, how interesting would be the positions of Mr. President Dole and some of the good people aforesaid. In such unhappy event we bespeak for them a Judge of more liberal and accurate views of the criminal law them were announced in the trial here referred to.