The Kumara Times. Published Every Evening. MONDAY, APRIL 26, 1880.

Kumara Times, Issue 1114, 26 April 1880, Page 2

The Kumara Times. Published Every Evening. MONDAY, APRIL 26, 1880.

The decision given by the Resident Magistrate at Stafford Town on Thursday last in the case of John Rodgers was one that clearly vindicated the defendant's course of action as a member of the Aralmra Road Board. The information, which was laid under the 18th section of the "Countv of West-

land Act, 1868," charged the defendant with acting as a member of the Road Board in question, lie being incapacitated from so doing in consequence of his duration of office having expired. The Magistrate, after expressing his opinion that the wrong course of procedure had been pursued by the prosecution in this case (in which opinion, however, he admitted he could feel no great confidence, in consequence of the defective nature of the language of the Act), delivered his decision on the main questiou at issue, viz., the incapacity of the defendant to act as a member of the Arahura Road Board. "Upon this point the Magistrate said he " thought a conclusion might be arrived at With great clearness. The offence defined in the 18th section was that of acting as a member of the Board when incapacitated under the provisions of the Act. Tt was a penal clause, and as such must be interpreted with strictness. He must not, therefore, regard anything as an incapacity which was not pronounced to be so by the Act." After quoting the sub-sections of the Act' which enumerated the various grounds on which persons were incapacitated from acting as members of the Board the Magistrate said he "thought, therefore, that the offence as laid in the information against the defendant as to having taken part iu the proceedings of the Board after having gone out of office was not an offence at all within the meaning of the 18 th section. Upon the question of the defendants seat having been already vacated, he thought there was some reason for doubt, and if his decision de. pended on this point, he could hardly say that the ' extraordinary vacancies' relied on by the informant had been proved by sufficiently definite and appropriate evidence." Nothing could be clearer or more explicit than this decision that John Rodgers was and is still a member of the Arahura Road Board, and consequently all the actions of the Board during his term of office, although a great outcry has been made about this matter, have been legally carried out. Probably many will say that the past actions of the Board, however legal, have not been of a nature to warrant public confidence again being placed in that body. In this we to a certain extent coincide; but at the same time " circumstances alter cases," and by a thorough re-organization of or the infusing new blood into the Board through the medium of the thres seats now vacaut, this objection to a great extent might be removed. With the ratepayers themselves rests the power to place on the Board representatives who not only have their interests of the district at heart, but those at whose hands the present unsatisfactory state of affairs would quickly undergo a transformation. That the Arahura Road Board will be a corporate body of the future as well as the past there is now but little room to doubt, owing to the recent action of the Westland County Council relative to that body ; aud as that is the case, even if we are only governed a little, let us be governed well. "We fell assured that if the present vacancies in the Board are filled by men in whom the ratepayers can feel confidence, instead of this body being as at present a bye-word, it would eventually prove an inestimable benefit to the district at large.