THE CATTLE CASE.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Issue 34, 14 January 1899, Page 2

THE CATTLE CASE.

(TO T«!* BDITOTt). Sir,— Notwithstanding Mr W. M. Hamilton's strictures, I sincerely hope you will continue to watch what goes on at our Court and comment upon it when occasion seems tn require, as newspaper criticism is the most likely thing to stop the silly and grosf things that occasionly startle people from that profaned quarter. Even a blunder of law may be pardoned if the intention is good, us law is tot always synonymous with justice. Ik would not appear to be so in this instance, for if the law goes to the extreme that Mr Hamilton contends, it must suiely hay« gone mad. I cannot see the similarity of the position betwesn a person using the roads, and another selling liquors. Everybody, master and man, has the right to use the roads for driving; cuttle ; and, therefor*, has his own responsibility for abuse of the right, but the master only who has bought the privilege has the right to sell liquor in a house, and must bear the responsibility of allowing another to do it under cover of his privilege. But what I should like to know is whether the County Council acknowledge the law as Mr Hamilton states it. If they do, well and good as far as they are individually concerned, but if not, it is a mean thing to u<se the ratepayers' money in paying a premium and employing their Solicitor in obtaining convictions on terms which they would not submit to themselves. Most of them aie stockorwners. and it may easily happen that they niiGiht find themselres in the same hobble Its Mr Hastie.^ It would be a fine thing to see Mr Hamilton fitting this pretty boot of his into the legs of a County Councillor (or a J.P.) Then as the rangeis are servants of the Council and not above human frailties, one of them might by chance bring th« Council into the same fix. For the sake of poetical justice one may be pardoned for expresssing the hope that such a case may occur- I suppose next that if I Jend mr bicycle to anyone to go a message for me and the messenger chooses to nde on the footpath, I shall be responsible in the penalty as owne»of the bike ! No doubt in one case the law says that the " person " who does the act is liable, and m the other the person who " allows " it, but that difference in language is necessary by the nature of the cast, because the dumb cattle cannot be made responsible for their own actions, and happily ordinary mortals are not subjected to the fate of Ntbuchadnezzar to need a legal restraint from grazing with their own mouths. — I am. etc., A County Ratepamx.