In sentencing, on Thursday fortnight, to penal servitude for a
period of eighteen years, two of the accomplices in a most cruel and cold-blooded Kerry murder,—a murder that occurred in the early part of last year,—Mr. Justice Murphy made some remarks on the highly beneficial change which had been pro- duced in Kerry by the Crimes Act,—remarks which all the rabid opponents of that Act, and all the hesitating apologists for it, ought to weigh before reiterating their attacks or giving new expression to their doubts. "He was glad to be able to say that a vast change had come over that state of things, from the continued vigilance of the police, from the knowledge they had acquired of the places in which those outrages were committed, and from the increased powers they possess to detect ; and, above all, from the knowledge that had come home to persons engaged in those organisations that on their crimes being detected, and evidence being available to prove that they were guilty, and that they would be tried in places where jurors were not afraid to dis- charge their duty,—from all that a better state of things had arisen, and, he trusted, would continue to advance, and that, as the County-Court Judge of Kerry lately said, moonlighting may soon disappear from out of the County Kerry." Yet there are those who think that this immunity from wicked and cold- blooded crime has been dearly purchased by the curtailing of the liberty of a few lawless and unscrupulous agitators.
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