THE EDALJI CASE AND ITS SEQUEL. T HE Edalji case, ugly
and unfortunate from the first, has undergone a fresh development. There has been another outbreak of the hideous outrages on horses and cattle which led to the imprisonment for three years of Mr. George Edalji, and in this case it is certain that it was not Mr. Edalji who committed the crime. On the morning of August 21st a horse belonging to a farmer residing in the neighbourhood of Great Wyrley, the scene of the crimes of 1903, was found to have been cut or stabbed during the night. The police, however, decided that the wound had been inflicted accidentally, either by a cow which grazed in the same field, or by the animal lying down on broken glass. Little more notice was taken. But on Tuesday matters became worse. Two horses belonging to Captain Harrison, a colliery owner, were found in a field, one dead and the other dying, and both horribly mutilated. The field was the same in which two cows belonging to Captain Harrison were killed four years ago, and the horses, disembowelled with a sharp knife, were wounded in the same diabolical way. In one respect, however, the crimes of the past week differed from those of four years ago. When the cattle were maimed in 1903, Mr. George Edalji was living with his father at the vicarage of Great Wyrley, within a short distance of the fields in which the cattle grazed. He was convicted for one of the crimes. In the present case he cannot possibly have been the criminal who mutilated the animals. He was in Yarmouth on a holiday. Whatever is uncertain about any of the previous outrages, of these one thing is absolutely certain, that it is not Mr. Edalji's, but another's, which is the guilty hand.
Before commenting further on this remarkable case, it may be convenient to summarise very shortly the story of the previous outrages and their consequences. Mr. George Edalji is the son of a Church of England clergyman, the Rev. S. Edalji, vicar of Great Wyrley. Since 1888, at various intervals, the Edalji family have received several series of scurrilous and threatening letters, which ceased at one time with the prosecution of a servant-maid, but were renewed, and which do not seem to be the work of one person. Throughout the letters were characterised by intense hatred of the whole Edalji family. There was a gap in this letter-writing between 1895 and 1903; but in 1903 letters began to be received again at the vicarage, and. on February 2nd of that year took place the first of the long series of cattle-maiming outrages which cul- minated in the conviction of Mr. George Edalji on the specific charge of having wounded a horse belonging to the Great Wyrley Colliery Company on August 17th, 1903, and of having sent a letter to a local police. sergeant threatening to murder him. Upon convic- tion, Mr. Edalji was sentenced to seven years' penal servitude, but of the seven he only served three ; he was liberated in October last year, his sentence having been reduced by order of the Home Office so that it might tally with the sentence pronounced upon another person found guilty of a similar offence. Of the justice of the conviction there has always been unfortu- nately, the gravest doubt. Mr. Edalji himself, the first day of his trial, has protested his innocence on every possible opportunity, and he has had plenty of friends to help him. The newspapers have given the widest publicity to his case, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in particular has urged in a series of closely reasoned articles the absurdity of supposing that the crime of which Mr. Edalji was found guilty can possibly have been committed by him. Into the details of these arguments it would take too long to enter ; but two main points, apart from the original defence of an alibi, have been urged : one, that Mr. Edalji suffers from astigmatic myopia to such an extent that with- out glasses he can hardly distinguish objects a few yards from his nose; the other, that the outrages did not cease with his conviction. While he was awaiting his trial, and when lie was serving his sentence, further crimes of the same kind were committed. It was doubtless the unsatisfactory aspect of the jury's finding, considered in the light of freshly presented facts, that induced Mr. Gladstone, the Home Secretary, to appoint a Special Committee of three to investigate and report upon the whole case. Unfortu- nately, however, the Committee's Report did not result in justice being done. The Committee reported that they could not agree with the jury in their verdict of guilty, but that as they thought it possible that Mr. Edalji had written some of the scurrilous letters—an offence with which he was never charged—they considered that, "assuming him to be an innocent man, he has to some extent brought his troubles upon himself." Upon which the Home Secretary came to the astonishing conclusion that though Mr. Edalji was entitled to a free pardon, he could be granted no compensation for the years he was con- demned to spend in prison. That is, he was innocent of the extremely serious crime for which he was tried, but just possibly guilty of a, minor offence for which he was not tried, and therefore he could receive no compensation for having suffered the severe penalty attached to the crime he did not commit. One would have imagined that outside the realms of Wonderland no such Report could have been put on paper.
Clearly that cannot now be the last word. Mr. Gladstone has stated more than once that he has nothing to add to his decision' but he will be the first to realise that the discovery of these last outrages, which cannot by any possibility have been committed by the man who was con- demned for one of the others, completely alters the situation. Many people have believed Mr. Edalji absolutely innocent from the first ; but it was possible, though always difficult, to argue that he was guilty of the particular outrage for which he suffered imprisonment. It is absolutely impos- sible to argue that he can have committed the outrages of Monday night, and that immensely strengthens the arguments of those who have always urged his complete innocence in the first case. That being so, the present position of the Home Office becomes untenable. The Home Office appears to think that it is justifiable to acquit a man of a crime, but to hint mysteriously that if all the circumstances were known, the public would agree that he ought to be punished. Yet none of these mysterious circumstances are disclosed ; merely the released prisoner is told that though he has been acquitted of one crime, he is probably a thoroughly worthless fellow in other respects, and deserves no reparation whatever. That attitude, always illogical and unjust, can be maintained no longer. The Home Secretary will see now that the public will not be satisfied until one of two things has been done. Either it /must be proved that Mr. Edalji was in some degree accessory to the crime of which he was first found guilty and afterwards innocent, or that he was accessory to another similar crime ; or else he must receive full compensation for the years which he spent in prison. If the guilt of these last three crimes can be brought home to the author, so much the better for English justice ; but even if the criminal remains for ever undiscovered, still the wrongful condemnation of an innocent man in the first instance remains a blunder for which we ought to do our utmost to atone.
It is sometimes urged, in cases such as this, that it is possible to be too soft-hearted, or too sentimental, about occasional miscarriages of justice. No greater or more mischievous error was ever conceived. The whole of our criminal jurisprudence may be said to be based upon the principle that no error can be more fatal than the con- viction of the innocent. It is for this reason that English law insists with such special force that a man must be deemed innocent until he is proved guilty. It is on this ground that every jury is reminded that the prisoner must have the benefit of the doubt. It is because of this that we say that it is better for ten men guilty in reality to escape than for one man to perish unjustly. But how can a man be deemed innocent till, he is proved guilty if we acquiesce in his being punished for crimes in which we admit that he had no part ? What benefit of the doubt has he obtained ? Its burden, not its benefit, has been laid on him. Those who talk glibly of innocent persons suffering for guilty, and of accidents necessarily happening, do not realise that punishment is none the less miserable because it is mistaken. The mills of justice may be thrown the wrong grist, but they grind none the less surely. Perhaps a man must hear the key turn in the iron door before he knows the whole bitterness of what he has lost when the door opens ; but it needs no great thought to calculate that to take years from a man's life comes short only of taking the life itself. There can be no compensation offered for the last and most terrible mistake of all ; but to grant compensation in the fullest degree for lesser errors is the plain duty, as it should be the noble distinction, of the jurisdiction of a free country.
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