When Orientals over here got into the clutches of the Law and are convicted they will spend the Jast penny of their savings and tax the resources of their fellow countrymen in endeavouring to upset the conviction, The lawyers they get to represent them, being well rewarded, will burn midnight—oil in searching for the tiniest of loopholes in the law. Only this. week at Victoria Chief Justice Hunter handed down judyment dismissing a habeas corpus application made in the ease of Chow Ben, one of a Tong list of test ences covering deugg convietion. In this particular which wax tried in Vancouver objection raised to. the conviction of Chow Ben way that the informa. tion was faulty by reason duplication of charges. This was due to the information setting, out the charge as that of "having a dry, morphine and cocaine, possession." The Chief Justice Aecidded against the objection. If the contention were correct, he pointed out, then each thing stolen from 'n house at one time might be made a separate charge. In law, his lordship declared, there is only one kind of theft ina ease of that kind, although many articles may be taken. The convic tion now sustained caries with it deportation, which ix the main reason for the appeals in these Chinese eases.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.