A WONDERFUL DECISION.

Evening Star, Issue 10212, 14 January 1897, Page 3

A WONDERFUL DECISION.

la a recent number of the Indian Law Reports, Madras series, there is a decision which is likely to prove of the greatest impoitance to the public, both Native and European, and it seems desirable tbat attention should be drawn to it. The facts were these: There was a riot in a field of standing crops. The defence alleged that the crops had not been damaged at all. The magistrate, like a sensible man, instead of trusting to a string of untrustworthy witnesses, went to the field and saw for himself that there were the plainest possible signs of a large crowd having both trampled down the crops and having partly dug up the field with spades. That part of the defence was therefore exposed as false. The High Court was asked, in revision, to order the case to be retried "do the ground that what the magistrate had himself seen had made him a witness of the fact, and had influenced his judgment. The High Court accepted this argument, and ordered retrial. "Now," asks the layman reader, "suppose the law says the High Court is right ?" Well, dear layman, judge for yourself. Here is the law, as laid down in the Code, in plain and concise language: "No magistrate shall, except with permission of the Court to which an appeal lies from his Court, try to commit for trial any case to or in which he is a party or personally interested." The layman reader of course says: " Well, I'm blowed! Was the magistrate supposed to be personally interested because he went and inspected the scene of offence without a bandage over his eyes ?" Yes, my dear layman, that is what Sir Arthur Collins and Mr Justice Da vies have rnled; and we are all blowed, laymen and lawyers together, and the trouble is/that we shall all remain blowed, and our magisterial cases also, until a Full Bench has consigned this astonishing decision to limbo. That may take two or three years or more. ' Madras Weekly Mail.'