The Ashburton Guardian. Magna Est Veritas et Prevalebit FRIDAY, MARCH 13, 1885. The Police and the Licensing Act.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1487, 13 March 1885, Page 2

The Ashburton Guardian. Magna Est Veritas et Prevalebit FRIDAY, MARCH 13, 1885. The Police and the Licensing Act.

The Police in all parts of the colony have testified to the difficulty of obtaining convictions against publicans for breaches of the Licensing Act. That this testimony is not unsupported by facts has repeatedly been shown, but never more clearly than in the prosecution recently directed against a Methven publican. In this particular case a licensee bearing an exceptionally good character was charged with having supplied drink during prohibited hours. The charge, in the opinion of the presiding Magistrate, was sustained by the evidence of two of the recipients of the drink; and we may at once say that, while holding the very highest comparative opinion of the manner in which the defendant’s house is conducted, we fully concurred in the decision. The defendant, however, appealed, and the case came before Judge Ward in the District Court on Wednesday last. In the higher Court the two material witnesses already referred to showed a much more precise recollection of times and events than they had exhibited in the lower. Certain flagrant discrepancies in their evidence induced Judge Ward very properly to reject it, and consequently the conviction in the lower Court was quashed. The course of this prosecution and its ultimate fate very aptly illustrate the difficulties of which the Police complain. They rely upon evidence which is either given with reluctance or malevolence, and on such testimony the Court has the greatest difficulty in arriving at the merits of the case. Witnesses favoraby disposed towards the accused are invariably afflicted with the least retentive memories ; by some recurrent accident they have never carried watches at a time when a knowledge of the hour would have been important to the case, and their recollection of facts is too vague to guide the judgment of the Court. . Witnesses of the other class —those who give their evidence with an avidity, bias and preciseness which must at once excite the incredulity of the presiding justice —are even more difficult to value. An informant is always regarded by the British schoolboy as the most ignoble miscreant, and even when that schoolboy has developed Jnto a man and reached the magisterial chair it is not unnatural that he should retain some of his early impressions with regard to Queen’s evidence. But we submit that the Police should not rely upon such evidence: it is neither fair to the Magistrate nor the accused that they should do so. The licensing laws are as

much to be observed as any other enactment of the legislature, and it devolves upon the Police to see for themselves that their provisions are enforced. The Police know as well as we do that offences against the Act are of daily occurrence in every hotel in the colony; the knowledge is common property, and it is quite time that the representatives of the law were aroused to a proper sense of their obligations. Those obligations have been so long neglected that it may have become particularly unpleasant to now undertake them ; but many other duties of a Police officer are not distinguished for the pleasure afforded by their execution, The police should announce their intention to inspect the licensed houses nightly, this announcement should be rigorously carried out, and any offence against the existing laws as rigorously reported and punished. If these laws are too harsh they should be modified, but public interest, public decency, and public opinion demand that the law standing upon the Statute Book shall be enforced without fear or favor.