The week has been marked by the extradition of Jabez
Balfour, who started for Southampton from Buenos Ayres, on board the Tartar Prince,' on Wednesday. Up to the last moment, efforts were made to detain him, the Judge of the Criminal Court in Salta sending his officers on board the Tartar Prince,' with orders for his arrest to answer certain local charges. The National Government of the Argentine Republic, however, intervened, released the prisoner by force, and allowed the Tartar Prince' to depart with the great defaulter on board. The precedent is considered most important, as the whole world may now be considered closed to persons charged with pecuniary offences on a grand scale, but we fear the lesson may be read also in another way. Jabez Balfour is considered a great criminal, and the Foreign Office has applied pressure of the sharpest kind; but never- theless it has taken months, and an expenditure of thousands, to obtain his surrender. What is wanted to deter intending defaulters, is 9. rapid and cheap process of arrest; and even that, as we have argued elsewhere, may only drive them to more scientific methods of stealing or to suicide. Still, if it is good that fraud should be punished, it must be good that any method of evading punishment should be cut off.
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