his plain duty, and by endeavouring to throw the responsibility on other shoulders he deprived the accused of one of the safeguards which the law gave him.
Mr Wodehouse has nothing whatever to do with the grounds of the Governor's decision; he has to perform his duty conscientiously and nothing else.
It is for all. Wodehouse
"It was not within my knowledge when I committed the prisoner that the bare fact of committal in itself constituted a conclusive argument against the prisoner, primâ facie case being, as I imagine, from a Magistrate's point of view, capable of consisting of every degree of probability from that of absolute certainty to that, attenuated almost to the vanishing point, and only—
"committed as was the case in this instance from deference to the higher tribunal from which I thought the final decision on the merits of the case would more properly come.
The definition of a primâ facie case from a Magistrate's point of view which I have given is one I never saw before in any law book. It differs totally from that given by Starkie in his work on evidence, in which he says that "a prima facie case is that which, not being inconsistent with the falsity of the hypothesis, nevertheless raises such a degree of probability in its favour that it must prevail if it be credited by the Jury unless rebutted or contrary proved":
Mr Wodehouse's definition will be rejected by every one who knows how to deal with this subject, and it is to be regretted that he did not consult some work on evidence before committing himself to the statement which he has made.