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Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3698, 22 May 1883, Page 2

Clause 9 of the Municipal Corporations Act Amendment Act, 1878, runs as follows: — "All by-laws or regulations of any municipality, city, town, or borough, which has become aborough under the said Act (1876), and which were in force at the date of the constitution of such last-mentioned borough, shall be and bo deemed to have boon as valid and effectual, to all intents and purposes, as if the same had been made under the said Act. And all suoh. by-laws or regulations shall continue in force until altered or repealed in the manner provided by the said Act, and shall be proved and received in evidence in like manner as by-laws made undor the said Act are proved and received in evidence." The Borough of Napier was constituted in 1874, and re-oonstituted by the Act of 1876. The remark of the morning Herald, that a number of the municipal by-laws have no legal effect because they wcro framed under tho Act of 1867, it will be seen from tlio clause quotedabove, ispurenonselise. The: O can be no doubt, however, in view of ail manner of technicalities and legal obstruct tions being placed in the way of the politG or Corporation when endeavoring to enfor< • tho by-laws, that on all occasions a solicit* r should be engaged in support of the inf orm'a - tion. Our morning contemporary asseris that Mr Lascclles, who appeared on behalf of a defendant yesterday, "urged that the repeal of the Act (1867) nullified all regulations made under its provisions." We do not believe that Mr Lascellcs attempted to mislead the Court by any such statement, nor can we conceive it possible that the Resident Magistrate should have been deceived by any such obvious absurdity. No legal practitioner would have risked h : e professional reputation by exhibiting such palpable ignorance of the law, and no Resident Magistrate would have accepted a dictum that on tho face of it bore the im« press of falsehood. The cases referred to by the Herald were dismissed on totally different grounds, and for very sufficient reasons. .