There is a strong argument for a Court of Review
in criminal cases to be found in the monstrous inequality in the severity of the sentences awarded by different Judges to the same offence. As has been pointed out in the. Times, Saturday's papers contained, two reports of trials for manslaughter, one before Mr. Justice Lopes, another before Mr. Justice Lush, the first of which re- sulted in a sentence on two prisoners (soldiers who, in a fight with a comrade in the barrack-room at night, had inflicted blows from which he died) of twelve months' imprisonment with hard labour ; while the second resulted in a sentence on the prisoner (a connection of the man who killed the deceased by throwing a red-hot poker at him, with which he had pre- viously been threatening him) of twenty years' penal servitude. As far as we can judge from the reports, the second case cer- tainly involved the more guilt, but not more in anything like such a vast proportion as that. This violent and arbitrary disproportion in the administration of justice brings our system of justice itself into disrepute, and a Court of Review would inevitably tend greatly to diminish the number of such anomalies.
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