The Evening Star. MONDAY, OCTOBER 6, 1902.

Evening Star, Issue 11701, 6 October 1902, Page 4

The Evening Star. MONDAY, OCTOBER 6, 1902.

The position) taken up by tho Crown Solicitor in tha Police Court on Corrnpt Thursday last directs atten■\Vitn(!s«cs. tj on m arl emphatic manner

to a condition of affairs which has baffled the police for some time past. .Mr Eraser's remarks were tantamount to an accusation that (he persons interested in defending most licensing cases d(« not hesitate to suborn the witnesses for the prosecution, to pay naught of the defence. So frequently hare the police found themselves with the ground cut from beneath their feet that their counsel in this last case preferred to withdraw tit© matter ■wholly rather than consent to an adjournment for a few days. He said .that he had had too many cases " spoil" (using the defending solicitor's word) in the interval between adjournment and hearing. The step taken by the Crown Solicitor was extreme, and, prima facie, indicates the extent to which the police have been harassed. The difficulty seems to be this: When information is conveyed to the police of breaches of the licensing laws, the unsworn testimony of witnesses is taken, and the case worked up on the basis of the supposed facts. But between the time the information is laid and the hearing, and more particularly when adjournments are granted, something goes wrong with the witnesses. , As Mr Praser put it, " they go had," a sort j of moral rot wts in, and by the time they I reach tho witness-box they liave got ready a brand-new tale, which does not. square with the original story poured by them into the discriminating ears of the police. There can be but two explanations : either the witnesses have deliberately misinformed the police or they have been tampered with. Tho latter explanation is the one which tho police seem to believe more credible, and accordingly they have resolved to take what measures they can to prevent this wholesale and constant corruption of their witnesses. Hence the determination to give licensees shorter notice than formerly, and to oppose ; adjournments in all but the most exceptional j and boua fide cases. Three days' notice or thereabouts will in future be given, and the police consider this sufficient for the working up of an ordinary case on its merits, j Whether this will get rid of "the apparent ;' anomaly is problematical, but the police can do nothing else at present to check it. The undoubted lack of strict veracity in liquor : cases is not peculiar to Dunedin. The whole j Colony—we might say every country where j liqnor laws exist—suffers from the moral | turpitude which, in these cases, induces a j man to tell a story and then swear the j reverse. It is unfortunately true that men who would shrink from telling a falseliood among their friends will, without a twinge of •conscience, aid and abet in the breaking of certain laws which occasionally inconvenience the individual—chiefly the gaming and liqnor laws. But why this moral confusion should lead them to the extent of telling deliberate falsehoods either to the police or in the witness-box is not readily explicable. We cannot believe that the average man who frequents hotel bars is so corrupt as to be bought over from truth to falsehood as easily as the Crown would have us believe, although we admit the weight of evidence is seemingly against us. Wo bare it on the authority of Pistol that men's oaths are wafer-cakes, and the ancient's dictum would Kceiu applicable to present-day licensing cases. The best remedy, perhaps, that can be suggested is that the police endeavor to sheet home . a charge of perjury-. The most palpable cases have failed for tho sole reason that , the.civil witnesses have not borne out the I police statements, nor adhered to their own ; i and some means must be found ?to. stop this j most undesirable state of things.