PATEA COUNTY MAIL PUBLISHED Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. TUESDAY AUGUST, 3, 1880. EMBEZZLEMENT?

Patea Mail, 3 August 1880, Page 2

PATEA COUNTY MAIL PUBLISHED Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. TUESDAY AUGUST, 3, 1880. EMBEZZLEMENT ?

A prosecution for alleged embezzlement is to come before the Resident Magistrate at Patea to-morrow. The case will be found to have a general interest. It is on this ground we desire to point out an apparent defect in the procedure. Mr Winch comb, lately collector to the Wairoa Highway Board, received certain payments on account of rates, and it was his duty to pay the money into a certain bank to the Board’s credit. It is alleged that, having engaged to collect rates on commission, and

haying received three several sums, ho paid those sums (one or all) to his own credit at a bank, and did not pay them, as directed, to the Board’s credit. That, if true, would be a breach of trust by a bailee, the money not being accounted for. Those sums have not been paid to the Board’s credit in any shape, and Mr Winchcomb having become a bankrupt, the question arises as to what form of offence he has committed in law.

The Crown Prosecutor at New Plymouth has had the facts placed before him, and he has instituted a prosecution for embezzlement. What we have to ask ot the Crown Prosecutor is, how can this be called embezzlement ? A bailee has failed, we suppose, to account for moneys received in his capacity as a commission agent. That failure would imply misappropriation, and we presume a lawyer would call the crime larceny. The Crown Prosecutor treats it as embezzlement. To do that he must show that Mr Winchcomb stood in the position of an ordinary servant. The facts appear to be that his engagement was the common one of a person acting as commission agent, and taking a certain small employment from the Wairoa Highway Board by way of filling up his time. He ivas their servant only in the sense of being equally the servant of any other of his clients. How can that Board go into Court and say, “ This man was our servant, and has embezzled our funds ? ” Might not a dozen or twenty settlers from the Wairoa district come into Court and say, “ This man was also my servant,” This sort of thing will not bear analysis. Mr Winchcomb was, as everybody hereabout knows, a general commission agent; and it is not apparent how a general servant of the public can be a particular servant of a hundred individuals. The facts appear to show that his relation to the Highway Board was that of a general agent doing a specific work on commission. Having received money in that capacity, and failing to account for it, he can hardly be prosecuted under the law of Master and Servant, upon the specific charge of embezzlement. There appears to have been an error of procedure.