GOVERNMENT’S RESPONSIBILITY

Once again has what Lord Morley would have called a thundering sentence been passed in a political case. Both the Editor and the Printer of the Zamindar have got three years each, as usual, of the rigorous variety. According to our usual practice, we reserve a detailed comment on the case until we have seen the judgment. Our present purpose is limited. We desire once again to remind the Government of the tremendous nature of its responsibility in this class of cases. That responsibility is great in all cases in which the Government is the prosecutor. The success or failure of these cases in courts of law seldom marks the end of the trouble; it is only the starting point. The courts have but a limited commission, and in many cases at least are either unwilling or unable to take all the attendant circumstances of an alleged offence into account. This is especially the case in India where the trial is held without a jury. On the other hand, these attendant circumstances are precisely those that weigh most with the public, and it is the public which is the ultimate judge in this class of cases. Unless, therefore, the Government and its law officers take pains to make sure of their ground before they launch forth upon a prosecution, success in courts of law will not be easy at the bar of public opinion. We do not, indeed, remember one single case of sedition of any importance during the last quarter of a century in which it has been otherwise. In many of these cases, it is quite possible that the conviction was technically lawful. The law of sedition is so worded that it is difficult to say in any case with assurance that the accused is not technically guilty. But technical guilt is what the public does not care for. In many cases, it treats the technical guilt as if it were the same thing as his substantial innocence, and a technically valid conviction as if it were a failure of justice.