WELLINGTON TOPICS.

Taihape Daily Times, 20 July 1918, Page 5

WELLINGTON TOPICS.

THE COURTS DIFFER. MAGISTRATES AND JUDGES. (Special Correspondent.) WELLINGTON. July 19. The Stipendiary Magistrates and the Supreme Court Judges are not in agreement upon several' cases that have lately attracted much attention in Wellington. The Magistrate recorded convictions" in the notorious Kelburn case., in the alleged lightweight butter case and in the gambling on licensed premises case. The public, ignorant of the law and apparently of the merits of the cases, warmly applauded these decisions and Wellington plumed itself on having developed the superior conscience. But now the Supreme Court has asserted its majesty and quashed the convictions, holding that the magistrate was wrong and that the defendants must go free. The zeal of the city for putting its house in order, as it imagined, has been sadly damped. BETTING NOT G-ATaBLnNG.

The only consolation that remains to the ardent reformers is that they now have an authoritative pronouncement to the effect that betting on horse-racing is not gamibling within the meaning of the Licensing Act. The Chief Justice, Sir Robert Stout, has consulted Webster's and Murray's dictionaries and has discovered that their definition of gambling does not include betting. Colloquially we talk of laying and taking the odds as gambling, hut really it is only betting, and if we gave the word a wider application we should render the man who speculates on the Stock Exchange or buys land for a rise subject to grave pains and penalties. The law truly is a subtle thing, even more difficult to understand than it is to obey. v MILITARY CAMPS. The message sent to the Minister "Of Defence by the Wanganui hranch of the Returned Soldiers' Association stating that the' conscientious objectors in the Detention Barracks are better treated than the men in camp, has given rise in some quarters to an impression that a large number of the men in training are dissatisfied with their conditions at Trentham and Featherston. As far as can be gathered from personal enquiries at both places this is very far from toeing the case, and tne" men themselves suggest that the Wanganui Returned soldiers made the Comparison merely to 'emphasise their opinion that the conscientious objectors were being treated with more leniency than they deserved. This is the view the Minister himself is inclined to take. ■THE RABBIT NUISANCE. The . rabbit nuisance, which thirty years ago was the gravest pefil menacing the pastoralists oTThe South Island, has lately assumed grave dimensions in the North and it was only natural that it should have received some attention from the Conference of the Council of Agriculture yesterday. In discussing a motion to the effect that the Department of Agriculture should take more drastic measures to suppress the nuisance several ers, including Sir Walter Buchanan, urged that the export of fablbit skins and preserved rabbits should be prohibited. People closely concerned In the subject have been urging this step for a long time past, believing that the profits made out of rabbits were delaying their destruction, and now the Council of Agriculture has taken the matter in hand the Government may be expected to do something.