The Nelson Evening Mail. THURSDAY, MAY 24, 1877.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XII, Issue 121, 24 May 1877, Page 2

The Nelson Evening Mail. THURSDAY, MAY 24, 1877.

To fly in the face of a legally-appointed Inspector and a prosecuting counsel, a convicting Bench of Magistrates, and a defendant .who pleads guilty to the offence with which he is charged, and to assert that ell and each of them are in the wrong, may appear to savor strongly of rashness. A T evertheless that is what we arc about to do in reference to a case heard in the Magistrates' Court yesterday, ' in which William Scott, the master of tne steamer Lyttelton, was charged with " suffering three head of cattle to be lauded at the port of Nelson without haviug obtained the certificate of the Inspector as provided by the Diseased C.tfle Act, 1871." The clauses of the Act under which the iiKormatiou was la'd were, wc believe, although such was uot specially slated, the 31st a .d 30'id, but it is quite clear from the wording that these are not to be read by themselves, but in conjunction witb the 30th clause. This clause provides that if it shall be sati-factorily proved that disease has broken out in any district within the colony it shall be lawful for the Governor in Couucil to declare such district to be infected within the meaning of the Act, and from time to time to prohibit the removal of cattle from any such district to any other part of the colony. As a sequence to this, clause 31 defines the duties of Inspectors. The opening paragraph of the clause ii will be necessary to quote verbatim, merely premising that the

italics are our own. It run3 as follows :— " With respect to cattle exported from any district within the colony to any other part of the colony, and subject to srch Orde.s in Co a'l as may be made « der the- two last preceding sections"— the first of which refers to the importation of cattle from foreign districts, and has nothing to do with the case at issue—" the duties of an Inspector of | Diseased Cattle shall be as follows." These duties are thus defined in five sub-sections, one of them being that, after having satisfied himself that there is no disease, he shall give a certificate to that effect. We now come to clause 33, upon which, no doubt, the prosecution relied yesterday, and which, if taken by itself, would establish their case beyond all question. It is as follows :— "Every master of a vessel who shall land or suffer to be landed any cattle without having obtained such certificate, or shall otherwise offeud against the provisions of this Act shall forfeit and pay any sum not exceeding £500" Now the "provisions of this Act," so far as they refer to imported cattle, clearly apply, according to to Clause 31, only to catile imported from places that have been proclaimed infected districts. The next step .in our argument is to give the facts of the case upon which we are commenting, which may be stated very briefly as follows:— Three head of cattle were imported from Marlborough. Marlborough is not an infected district wiihin the meaning of the Act. The cattle were not inspected prior to being landed. But was it necessary that they should be? As we read the Act, tLe reply must decidedly be in the negative, as, no order in Council having been made with reference to Marlborough, the provisions of the Act are not offended against by their importation. If the fact of his having pleaded guiity does not debar him from doiug so, we should very much like to see au appeal made by the defendant iu the case under notice, as we feel sure that a different interpretation would be placed upon the law by a higher Cor -t.