EDITORIAL NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXVI, Issue 10062, 2 February 1909, Page 1

EDITORIAL NOTES AND COMMENTS.

If the opinion which was expressed byMr Kettle, S.M., m

TnE Auckland, in conpkhexsial liquor nection with the vtusaxce. hearing of a case against a publican for selling- liquor on a Sunday, were generally approved, much legal trouble and expense would be avoided, inasmuch as prosecutions for committing such breaches of. the Act would be discontinued because they would be unprovable. Mr Kettle said that it was wrong, and contrary to law and his conception of British fairplay, for anyone, especially a policeman or a detective, to tempt ot induce or procure any person to commit any kind of offence with a view to prosecuting him. According to this dictum it is quite proper to encourage a licensee to break the law if one wants to graitfy his mania for drink, and thus to place the seller m jeopardy whilst working incalculable evil, personal and public; but it is wicked for those who are employed to detect sue* lawbreakers to confront the cunning of the drink fanatic with those professional expedients which are -the only effective weanons in the armory of the limbs of the 1-nv If we were swayed by Buch artificial' scruples the worst criminals would murder and plunder to their heart s content "British fairplay" is an excellent quality, but we must ascertain what it is before we can exercise it. It would je difficult for the Auckland Magistrate to prove that a man who sells drink, whether as a licensee, or by stealth, as a liquor sne-ik with the idea of gaining an exceptional advantage over his fellows is entitled to any consideration, and that it is not ••British fairplay" to use the only effective available means of compelling such offenders to act in accordance with i. ose canons of right which are implied m this threadbare and much-distorted phrase. i. men are in the habit of flocking to a bar on Sundays with the object of being served with liquor by a law-breaking licensee, it is surely an absurdity to declare that such a licensee is unfairly tempted when a nlain-clothes noliceman makes one amongst the drouthy clamant crowd and nets a drink so as to prove that the lawbreaker is really breaking the law. _ It is hard enough now to get convictions against liquor dealers who set the Act ; t defiance to the injury of the community; and the drink traffic has so many conscienceless defenders whose cunning devices arc multifarious. . that the police should be encouraged to use any and everv reputable means to countercheck the rascality of the liuuorite. If Mr Kettle's theory were carried to its logical conclusion, it was a mean tiling for the Christchurch shunter to secrete himself under a v:m so that he might trap men whom ..u suspected of robbing the Railway Department. If he had acted in accordance with Mr Kettle's "British fairplay" he would have stood where the robbers could see him. so that they would not have been encouraged by an'appearance of false s"eurity to plunge themselves into sm and disaster. If the police are, in any degree, influenced by Mr Kettle's deliverance, the way of the liquor-breaker will lie still more easy than it is now. It ■will, however, take a great deal of persuasion to induce the police and the people to agree with him that the detective who induced Wrathall, the offender, to sell him lienor out of hours was, in law, equally "tiiltv with the licensee who served him, tiecaiise the Act does not specially provide that a detective may thus break the law for the purpose of securing a conviction. The problem set by Mr Kettle is complicated by his declaration that, because the law does not do this, the conduct of the policeman who secured WrathalFs detection and punishment was not in accord with "British fairplay.'-' That is to sa->-. there would have been nothing worthy of condemnation in the disreputable 'act of catching the nllencler unawares if the law bad only prescribed that it was permissible. Who now says that morality cannot 1m? created by Act of Parliament?