KID GLOVE JUSTICE.

Taranaki Daily News, 4 June 1918, Page 7

KID GLOVE JUSTICE.

To tlic Editor. Sir, —The licensee of the Okatoi Hotel should consider himself fair]}' 'iueky. At least, this is how the position presents itself to me, after reading your court report of his case in l<'ri<lay's issue. Here is a licensee, who was convicted of a similar offence sometime ago —-probably toy the same S.M., (but this point is inmaterial). Ha is again charged with keeping his licensed pre-' mises open for the sale of liquor at a lime when the law states such premises should ibe closed. The offence is admitted- The police Inspector informed the bench that these men were in the hotel after 9 a.m., :md were allowed to remain there drinking till after one o'clock in the morning, and. in addition, one of them was a youth under IS years of age. Furthermore, Mr. Quilliam, counsel for licensee Sanson, admitted that the aforesaid three men who had remained drinking in the V-'i till after one o'clock in the mum' ;e, shortly after leaving the hotel; caught' redhanded committing theft from a local store- As to whether or not the theft would have been committed apart from the drinking there is no need just now to speculate. These are the facts as stated. Yet in the face of these admitted facts tihe SjM- merely convicts the licensee. "No fine, no costs, no anything." Think of it I A few minutes previously, in the same court, the same S.M., mulcted a local clergyman in £1 13s fines and costs for driving without lights for a short distance in the moonbight on tiie Main South Road; and a settler was mulcted in a like sum for allowing cattle to stray on the road. In my vipw the decision of the S.M. in the hotel case is a scandal, and I write to direct special public attention to it.' I note that the licensee's counsl referred to the fact that Okato was engaged in a 'patriotic effort at the time the offence was committed- This surely was so much cant and eyewash, and of poor quality at that. What, in the name of all that is wonderful had Okato's laudable patriotic efl'ort to raise funds for special purpose to do with a hotel licensee's deliberate breach of the law? The plain fact is that the S.M.'a decision cannot he justified from any view point. The police, with commendable firmness, sheeted the job home, and deserve every credit. The liquor traffic ig the most lawless business in nnv community, and the police always experience considerable difficulty in sheeting charges home to law-breakers. Yet her-? is a clean cut case, the'facts concerning which are not questioned, proving a gross and deliberate violation of the law, surrounded "with other serious features readily oihservable to reasonable people, and yet the presiding magistrate treats the offence almost as i' the police were not justified in bringing it before the court. Convicted only, if you please! It only needed an apology from the bench to the licensee to complete the farce! Mad it been the proprietor of an essential business that had been caught supplying customers with necessary and harmless goods after hours tlie case would not lend itself to such strong adverse criticism, but when the law is deliberately broken to supply alcoholic liquors, which always tend to rob men of self-enntrol and frequently are a prolific source of poverty, breed vice and crime. ,and shortens life, the extraordinary verdict of the S.M. in the case under review deserves condemnation.—l am, etc., W. H. HAWKINS. Okato, Ist June.