BARRETT’S CASE.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1973, 21 June 1880, Page 3

BARRETT’S CASE.

To the Editor of the Globe.

Sib,—Permit me to draw attention to an error you have* perhaps unwittingly committed in your leading article of Saturday. A Licensing Bench occupies a different position to the Supreme Court tribunal of Judge and jury, who are bound to acquit or condemn on the evidence placed before them whether the accused be in their private opinion guilty or not. The Licensing Act, 1873, Amendment Act, 1874, seotion 28, sub-section 6, reads as follows :—*' At any licensing meeting the Court shall hoar and determine all applications and also all objections which may be made to such applications, on such evidence as ahall seem to it sufficient, whether t?ie same be strictly legal evidence or not." Section 31 of the same Act reads :—" Notwithstanding anything in the said Act or this Act contained, any Licensing Court may of its oivn motion take notice of any matter or thing which in the opinion of the Court would be an objection to the grant or issue of a certificate for a license, or for the rc?ie?val, transfer; and removal of a license, although no notice of objection has been given, as by the said Act and this Act alone is provided." I think a perusal of the Act will satisfy you that Mr Mellish acted on this occasion at any rate within tho law, as laid down for his guidance as a Licensing Commissioner. Yours, &C-, An Aduit Resident. Christchurch, June 21st, 1880. [We have made no error at all. Our friend is evidently little versed in law. If he applies to his solicitor, his doubts will probably be set at rest as to the powers of what he would make out a mighty tribunal. The parts italicised in the sections he qaote3 aro there "for specific purposes. Were their interpretation to be stretched out to the extraordinary tension suggested by an " Adult Resident," the machinery of the Bench would be absolutely useless, and its powers most abnormally autocratic.—Ed. Globe.] i