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Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 834, 24 February 1877, Page 2

What may not the consequences he ot‘ a ruling of a single magistrate out of the few hundreds who grace the Commission list P Mr T. IN’. Watt, the other day at Dunedin, decided that to play at billiards for any consideration whatever, let it be even the price charged flip the use of the table, was gambling pure and simple, and that, therefore, publicans allowing such a horrid slate of degrading sinfulness would render

themselves liable to the gloomiest terrors of the law. Of course, Mr Watt’s interpretation of the word i gambling is strictly right. It is about the most straight-laced mode of applying the word that can be conceived, but still, in absolute and dry law, it is not; incorrect. It is perhaps a.pity that the Dunedin Press Telegraphic Agency wired this decision of Mr Watt, as it did, all over the colony. From a Dunedin point of view, it is just possible that circumstances of a local | nature necessitated the police “ put--1 ting on the screw ” on certain billiard ! rooms. Thus Mr Watt may have had some very good reasons for *at retching the law to that point lof tension. But it must be rej membsred that circumstances not I only alter facts, but that they | also influence any need which may t exist for the application of those I penal statutes which are kept laying j dormant and are held in terrorem over \ people’s heads until such a time as the I authorities think fit to utilise them. I Mr, Watt’s view of these Billiard | atrocities, is but his own and nobody J else’s. His dictum in the matter | extends only to the confines of the | Judicial District in which lie sat and |no further. And even within that jurisdiction, at any given moment any I Justice of the Peace may rule in a j totally different direction. So far as ! Christchurch, or even Canterbury is ! concerned, we have little fear hut j that those to whom is entrusted the j conservation of the public peace, and | public good behavior will ever think i that local requirements are such in the ! way of “ making us good by Act of Parliament,” as to stretch the penal lawn in question in the manner done ; by the Police at Dunedin.