Mr. Matthews certainly makes a remarkably good Home Secretary. He
was right to reduce Mr. Justice Charles's rather astounding sentence of twenty years' penal servitude in. Haegan's case, though it may be questioned if lie did not reduce it too much when he reduced it to penal servitude for a :single year. But he was even more obviously right in refusing to grant Hargan a free pardon for shooting two drunken men dead who probably intended to assault him, but who cer- tainly had shown no sort of murderous intention, and who were seemingly hardly in a condition to do him any injury. Carrying loaded firearms in such a city as London is itself a very dangerous practice, and using them in panic, and with fatal effect, only because two ill-conditioned men. in their liquor run after you and cry " Hi !" sets an example of the most pernicious nature. We do not deny that there was -excuse for Hargan's crime. But it was a crime, and one against which it is necessary, for the well-being of society, that men liable to panic should be effectually warned.
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