WERE THE FINES INADEQUATE?

Evening Post, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 64, 13 September 1909, Page 6

WERE THE FINES INADEQUATE?

If no-license had been carried in Welling ton at the last local option poll, a good deal of fuss would have been made •by both, sides about the sly grog-selling cases recently before the court. But as all the city licenses have been renewed f»i- wwthsv thre» yuavp, nobody, e»6ent ilia police, ffoeioe coacevacd to pay. any

epecial attention to the subject; and even the bench, if we may venture to cay so, hardly appears fully to realise its gravity. On Monday last tne magistrate had to deal with a charge against a reßtaurantkeeper of selling intoxicating liquor 1 without a license in a most audacious fashion. One of the two constables who were served by the defendant with beer testified that "there ■were a number of other persons in the room, none of them eating, but all ol them 'having bottles and glasses in front of them." The constables watched what was going on for a short time, and then left, with two bottles of beer in their possession, having been first warned by the accused to "straighten themselves up and not show the beer, as there might be Eome 'Johns' about." The case was so clear, that after listening to the evidence for the prosecution, counsel for the defendant intimated that he desired to withdraw the plea of "not guilty." ■The magistrate pointed out that a heavy penalty was provided by the Licensing •Act, and that licensees who paid for their privileges must be protected, and proceeded to impose a, fine of £10 and 7s costs in each case. On Friday two other unlicensed persons wero before the court, charged with a remarkable form of Sunday trading. It was stated by the police that the illicit traffic in liquor on •Sundays had been going on for somo time past in the neighbourhood of Taran'akJ and Tory streets; and the detection certainly did not entail the expenditure of any- high degree jt ingenuity on the part of the police. (Liquor which one of the accused had purchased for 2s a gallon, was oyenty sold ty him to two constables in the street on Sunday at Is- 6d a bottle. A search of the accused's premises which •was subsequently aiado revealed two demijohns, two whisky bottles, and a mineral water bottle, ' ail of which had contained liquor. The evidence in the other cas6 was presumably similar, but it was not produced owing to a plea of guilty . In one of these two cases a fine lof £10 and costs was imposed for the ■double offence; in the other, the fact that there were three previous convictions against the man, led to a sentence of six weeks' imprisonment with hard labour. 'Now, with' regard to the pecuniary penalties at any rate, we think that the universal opinion will .be that they are too light. In each case- the offence was both deliberate and systematic, and there was no mitigating circumstance ot any land. The magistrate pointed out that legitimate traders ■must l>e X protected, yet he only imposed a fine representing one-fourth of the license fee which these traders have to pay every year before they can carry on a business practically • restricted even then to six days in the week. Measured by this standard, and still more if 'measured by the standard of the prospective profits ot such illegal trading if undetected, the penalties seem inadequate. .From the moral standpoint of the wrongdoers' motives, and the mischief which their wrongdoing inflicts upon the community, the result is equally disappointing. Nobody desires to see a vindictive penalty imposed, but the community will be glad to see future offenders more severely handled.