The commutation of the sentence of death passed on tho convicted murderer Whareapa will excite different feelings according to the aspect iv which the matter is viewed and the mental bias of the critic. For our own part, however, wo do not hesitate to condemn the deci sion which was come to at tho Cabinet Council yesterday. "We fail to discern in the evidence adduced at tho trial any circumstance which would weigh in the prisoner's favour, or would i remove the crime out of the category of murders committed with deliberate premeditation and savage cruelty. There has grown up in modern times a class in England and tho Colonies imbued with powerful and mistaken humanitarian sympathies, to whom capital punishment in any form is objectionable ; but so long as the law exists in its present form we are not concerned with these views iv judging of the propriety of the exercise of the Crown's prerogative of mercy in any particular case like that under notice. In Tuhiata's case there were many strong reasons why tho law should be allowed to tako its course. Apart from the general principle of the sacredness of human life, there is a special need of vindicating the majesty of the law in an exposed locality with a numerous and excitable Maori popu lation in immediate proximity to a sparse European population ; and the public mind was powerfully influenced by tha circumstances attending tho crime, the youth and education of the victim, hor social position, her defence lessnoss, and the absence of any motive for tho murder. But in tho case of tho unfortunate woman, Susan Whareapa, there are circumstances which appeal quite as forcibly to our sympathies, and which stamp the murder with features as repulsive to the civilised mind. Here was a young woman of IS, married to a man more than twice her age, living in a stace of semi-barbarism, in a community where there were only five other European females, from whose society she was, perhaps, ex cluded by her connection with a man, rightly or wrongly, regarded as be longing to an inferior race. She was subject to the whims and caprices of a comparative savage, whose inter mittent fits of jealousy culminated in murder. 