The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3, 1918. A BOROUGH LAW CASE.

Taihape Daily Times, 3 October 1918, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3, 1918. A BOROUGH LAW CASE.

(With which is Incorporated The X»i* hapc Pont and Walnrnmo News).,

The Taihape Borough Council has been pounced upon by the AuditorGeneral for having an upturned letter in the observance of the law, and Mayor and Councillors had to make their debut personally or by proxy in the Wellington Supreme Court to answer what Sir John Salmond made to appear a rather ugly and suspicious looking charge. It is well enough known in Taihaue that some fourteen public-spirited citizens came to the assistance of the Borough in a rather serious difficulty that was brought about by the war. The town was menaced with a shortage of water and electricity for all public and private purposes; the Borough Engineer advised that augmented power would have to be installed to avoid what might eventuate in a public calamity; there would be shortage of electricity for industrial and lighting purposes, and a shortage of water for drinking and flushing. Having this aspect of the water ana electricity situation impresed upon them by the Engineer, the Council appealed to the four winds •of heaven for an auxiliary plant sueh as their Engineer recommended. One was found available at Gisborne, or, it doesn’t matter where; then the redtape of the law intervened. It provided that the only process of raising the money was one that would require several months; this process was only in its preliminary stages when advice came that the machinery was sold to, another body that could put down the cash without any lengthy money-rais-ing preliminary. By some good fortune another opportunity came to procure the needed machinery ,and, sequentially, to save Taihape from a time of dark nights and a water famine, Mayor, Councillors and an equal number of citizens discussed the situation and decided that calamity to the town must be averted whatever the costs and they jointly~and severally gave a guarantiee to the Bank via Mr. Loughnan to raise the wind that was to'blow good to every citizen of the town, while loan proposals were submitted and voted upon by ratepayers. This was all accomplished and the guarantees to the Bank, given in generous public-spiritedness, were lifted. For rendering their fellow-townsmen this very excellent service, the guarantors who made themselves liable by an inverted letter of the law for having to pay from their private purses a sum of £3500 were proceeded against by the Auditor General and four judges of the Supreme Court heard, and adjudicated upon, the charge of having raised a loan for one purpose and devoting it to another. The amazing part of the Court procedure is that in which the Solicitor-General asserted that the Council had been guilty of arranging a well-conceived plan of camouflage to circumvent the provisions of the Local Bodies and Loans’ Act, and if such a scheme were allowed to pass the safeguards of the Statute would be destroyed. The law is still a sufficiently deep-dyed sinner to “choke at a gnat and swallow a camel,” for it seems to us that the camouflage of smoke was all emitted by Sir John Salmond himself. The charge of raising a loan for one purpose and using it foranother is deceptive camouflage, for we all .know that it was raised to purchase machinery for an essential public service; there was no secrecy or mystery about the processes; citizens all knew that no profit or emolument went to any of the generous partiepants, and above all fhe fear of water famine had caused every resident of the town to know that, by whatever avenues it passed through the money was for the one purpose of avoiding public disaster. The loan was raised to pay for an auxiliary power plant, and it was used for that purpose alone. The lay mind hereabout is a little confused; it cannot understand that the serious charges laid by Sir John Salmond only mean that a dozen or so of citizens did nothing more than lend the Borough the money while the loan processes as provided by Statute were put through; ordinary people only see virtue, not law-breaking, in such an act., The lay mind reads dishonesty into 'the Solicitor-General’s attitude in urging that when once the work is constructed there is no power to raise money to pay for it. but vagaries of the law are beyond understanding in their governance of many business and commercial transactions. It must be remembered that laws are made chiefly by politicians and lawyers, not by business experts. Mr. Skerrett said the whole case hinged on whether the loan raised was expended in paying off Mr, Loughnan’s overdraft at the Bank. Why there should be any such suggestion is another stickler to ordinary that Mr, Loughnau made, it possible for the Borough to acquire the only machinery there was in the Dominion that was an urgent necessity to Taihapo; if the long-drawn-out ways of

the law had been waied for that machinery would not have been available

and the people of Taihape would have had to suffer the consequences, and they might have been very serious. Let it be emphasised that although Mr. Lo'ughhau incurred all the trouble and resultant odium, ho took nothing out of the arrangement, neither Cid he e».er intend to take any profit or to make anything. As Mr.' Skerrett stated in Court, he intended it to be a beneficial contract for the Borough. The four judges reserved their decision, but at most there is only a technical fault in the whole proceedings, which was no secret to all the participants when they risked their money to help the Borough. Despite the much-ado-about-nothing of the law ,the burgesses and residents of Taihape owe a debt of gratitude to the men who came to their assistance when the danger signal was sounded, and it i? hoped that the present experience will not make bad citizens of them in deterring them from performing other acts of public generosity should occasion arise. They knew they were between the law devil and the anathema of the public deep-sea, and they risked the law-devil for the pubic’s health, convenience and comfort.