The Burden of Proof

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23818, 11 December 1942, Page 4

The Burden of Proof

For the second time in recent months the Government has passed legislation meddling with the longestablished and well-founded principle of British law that he who makes a charge must prove it and, in criminal issues, prove it to the exclusion of reasonable doubt. The Agricultural Emergency Regulations Confirmation Act, passed by the House of Representatives last week, contain 1 :, a clause throwing the burden of prool on the defendant in prosecutions under the Apple and Pear Marketing Regulations: and in October the Government approved a similar provision in the Fair Rents Amendment Act. These provisions mean that the defendant, in prosecutions under these acts, may be called on to prove his innocence. The purpose of the law of proof is to protect the innocent, and to quote Lord Hcwart, former Lord Chief Justice of England, the “ fundamental principle, that in England a man is deemed to be innocent unless and until he is proved to be guilty, is never with good " reason ignored. It is not merely that there is a well-established " rule, manifestly consistent with ” reason and good sense, that the harden of proof rests upon the " person who is affirming and not “ upon the person who is denying "something. There is the further " and infinitely welcome fact that " in England over a Jung period of " time there has always been a deep ‘‘and ineradicable regard (not to “ use a stronger word) for the "liberty of llv subject. English-

“men ... are passionately devoted “ to liberty itself, and view with in- “ tense jealousy anything which “ appears likely, even in a minor “degree, to impair it.” The Minister of Agriculture, when he outlined the Agricultural Emergency Regulations Confirmation Bill in the House, said that the Apple and Pear Marketing Regulations were designed to check black marketing. His aim is commendable, but not more so than that of penal legislation generally. A protest from the Leader of the Opposition drew from Mr Barclay a strange excuse for this alteration of the law. His department, he said, “ had tried to get “ convictions time after time, but “the retailers suspected, had just “ laughed at the department, having “ bought 50 per cent, of the fruit “ through ordinary channels and “ the other 50 per cent, not through “ those channels; and the depart- “ merit could not prove which was “which.” But the chagrin of the Department of Agriculture at being laughed at does not justify the Government in relieving the department of its responsibilities in a court of law. The just course for the department is to be more assiduous in getting evidence that will prove which is which.