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Poverty Bay Standard, Volume IX, Issue 1017, 29 December 1881, Page 2

The absurdities surrounding the enactment known as “ The Gaming and Lotteries Act” passed last session, are, day by day, making themselves more apparent. Until this law was actually put in operation, even though, as it has lately been, in a partial degree, it would have been hardly thought possible that legislative folly could so far go. The recent cases heard in Wellington when Sir William Fitzherbert, the Hon. John Martin, and other gentlemen were brought before the Resident Magistrate and Justices of the Peace in Wellington, will serve to direct public attention to this tyrannical piece of legislation. Sir William Fitzherbert, and the gentlemen with him, who took part in the sweep on the Hutt race course, did so, as it transpired in evidence, to test the question whether or not it was intended that such harsh legislation was meant to apply to the ordinary trivial sweeps that usually take place on such occasions. The participants in the sweep were under the impression that the law was only contemplated to refer to sweeps established upon a large scale, after the manner of North’s and others. As our readers will remember, the penalty inflicted upon Sir William Fitzherbert and his friends was a fine of ten pounds each. But the absurdity of the law was only equalled by the absurdity of the justice meted out. In the same court, on the same day, and before the same Resident Magistrate, with a couple of Justices of the Peace, similar charges were brought against some half-dozen persons for precisely the same offence, namely, that of joining in a sweep. But in these latter cases the penalty imposed upon each offender was a fine of forty shillings each and the costs of one witness amounting to five shillings. We wonder by whattrainof judicial reasoning the Bench arrived at the conclusion that the Hon. “ Johnny” Martin should pay £lO for indulging in a £2 sweep on the Hutt race course, and that' Smith, Brown, Jones,and Robinson, should pay only forty shillings for the same offence. We thought that there should be but one law for the rich and for the poor alike; but verily it savours much of magisterial snobbery when such distinctions are made. Without, doubt, had it not been for the wave of Greyism that carried “ Johnny ” Martin into the Legislative Council, he would never have been mulct to the extent he was by the Wellington Bench.