MAGISTERIAL FADS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9146, 30 August 1888, Page 3

MAGISTERIAL FADS.

I TO TKE EDITOR. Sir,—More than a week ago both your- ! self and your contemporary, the Star, com- ! mented on some decisions given by myself j and another Justice of the Peace in some cases of drunkards brought up before us at the Auckland Police Court, where I had taken my seat at the personal request of the Clerk of the Court. I thought it unnecessary to make any reply to your strictures, but as you still keep harping on the subject I think it due to myself to say a few words in explanation. You say, in one instance, that " many Southern papers are severe upon Sir W. Fox for his sentences on drunkards," and that they affirm that such people as myself are no more to be trusted than cranks (whatever that may mean). You quote also from one Wellington paper which I as given a whole leading article to the subject, in which the writer recommends " that the attention of the Department of Justice should be called to the extraordinary conduct of Sir Win. Fox, and that it is a most dangerous precedent to establish that a judicial officer is to administer the law for the gratification of his own individual fads instead of according to the merits of the case before him." The case, which ha 3 created so great a flutter in both the Northern and Southern papers, was simply this : —Five drunkards were in the dock. Iwo were old offenders who had been convicted times without number ; one a poor " tatterdemallion" of what had been a woman ; the other an elderly man, brutalised to an extent that made it sickening to look at him, and so utterly prostrated that the police suggested that he should be put under medical treatment, as the law directs. The other three were what are called " first offences": one a very dissipated and bad-looking lad of, say, 18 years of age ; and the other two women, of by no means attractive appearance. All five pleaded guilty, and none of them offered a word in extenuation : they had neither been christening a baby, nor burying a husband, nor sitting up with a sick friend, nor had met with a dear brother whom they had not seen for forty years. They had simply been and got drunk for the sake of the drink. The Act of Parliament under which they were brought up expressly says that such persons, on conviction, shall be liable to a penalty, on a first conviction, of not less than ss, nor more than 20s, or (in default of payment) imprisonment not exceeding forty-eight hours; for a second offence, not exceeding 60s, or imprisonment for seven days ; for a third or more, £5,0r fourteen days. Within these limits the law leaves the amount of punishment absolutely to (he discretion of the Justices. Well, we exercised that discretion ; and, seeing no extenuating circumstances, gave the full penalty in each case. On delivering the sentence on one of the " first offenders I used these words : —" It is a maxim with old soldiers never to fire blank cartridge over the heads of a mob ; they fire ball first, and if a penalty can do any good, it is clemency to give the severest on the first occasion, in the hope that it may deter the offender for the future." These are the simple facts on which I am declared to be no more trustworthy than a " crank," and it is suggested that the Minister of Justice should call me to account for what the writer terms a "magisterial fad." The Minister of Justice is, I hope, a more discreet person than to be guilty of such an impertinence. ]Now, so far from my " indulging my fad" in these cases, my private opinion is quite the other way. Ido not believe that any punishment, however severe, ever has, or ever will, cure a drunkard. I have often, on the platform, offered a large reward to any person who could produce a reformed drunkard, reformed by a five shillings or any other penalty. I have never had any response. If the loss of all that makes life worth living, health, home, wife, children, friends, property, prospects in this world and hopes in the next—if the loss of these will not deter a man from drink, is it likely that a 5s or £5 penalty, or forty-eight hours, or seven days' in gaol will do it? I know of few sights more calculated to provoke a pitying smile than a Resident Magistrate employed at a high salary, or two ordinary justices Bitting on the Bench of a Police Court, clothed in all their judicial robes (which usually means suits of colonial tweed at 455), spending the best hours of a fine summer's day in the vain attempt to cure poor drunkards by 5s penalties. If I had been " indulging my own fads," I would have let all five of the poor wretched creatures go scot free. The criminals who ought to have been in the dock were the brewers and publicans who had made them drunk, but who, unfortunately, were not there. Somehow they never are. We have the spectacle almost every day of the year in Auckland, city of the poor victims of the traffic brought up for sentence with their pockets empty, but the victimisers go free with their pockets full. But when I find myself on the Bench, I put away my own opinions of the inefficiency of punishment of drunkards, and simply carry Out the law as I find it; a very foolish law, as I think it, made by legislators on whom the experience of the old country for 400 years, and the dictates of common sense, seem to have been equally thrown away. It is clear that the framers of the law believed in the efficiency of punishment by penalties, and I exercise my discretion as the law has directed in the way I think most likely to carry oat their intention. Another reason for the higher penalties is this. The offenders have by their action put the country to great expense. The police, the gaols, the lunatic asylums, the refuges, the hospitals, are all largely, if not mainly, kept up for the benefit and filled by the victims of liquor traffic ; and if a few pounds can be got out of them in the way of penalties, it really only amounts to a special tax upon the class for whose necessities these institutions are kept up at the public cost. Unfortunately, they too often, as they will say themselves, " take it out in bricks," and so the profit is not as great as it might be. The weakest thing that has been said on thj subject was, I think, in your own paper, namely, that I ought to have known that it had always been "understood" in New Zealand that the smallest penalty of 5s would always be inflicted for a first offence. How can there have been any such " understanding ?" There must be at least two consenting parties to any understanding. Who were they ? The poor drunkards on the one side, and all the magistrates of the colony on the other ? Or was it among the various Benches all over the colony ? When was it arrived at? An " understanding," that the words of an Act Of Parliament should be interpreted in a particular way, and that discretion given by it Should not be exercised ! It is of a piece with that other theory that, notwithstanding an Act of Parlia* ment, there has always been an " understanding" that a license once granted must be renewed for ever unless forfeited by misconduct. Foolish talk, without a shadow of reason to support it! —l am, &c., William Fox.