HANDMAID OF BLACKMAIL

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22344, 15 February 1936, Page 3 (Supplement)

HANDMAID OF BLACKMAIL

f "COMMON INFORMER" MENACE Recent events in Britain's Law Courts have hastened the end of an agent of the law who for 400 years has lived and flourished upon the price paid for his information, states a London journal. He is known as the Common Informer. He appears in a great number of ancient statutes which are still unrepealed. But he has steadily become extremely unpopular, and from time to time his powers have been clipped by Acts that have made his practices subject to the approval of the Law Officers or the Public Prosecutor. There is, however, a large field in which he operates. This will shortly disappear. The views of the judges on the matter were expressed some time ago by a judge who, in a case under the Lord's Day Observance Act, commented : "No claim could come beforto the Court in less favourable circumstances. In order to ensure the punishment of the offenders under the Act, Parliament has enlisted the motive of private greed." The Common Informer came to his greatest prominence centuries ago, when State lotteries were conducted for the benefit of the revenue. Provincial lotteries, in competition with those of the State, were instituted, and similar events on a more private basis were also popular. To prevent this competition, Acts were passed, and rewards offered to any person who gave information in regard to alleged breaches of the law. These instruments of the law made big incomes, and the scandal grew to such proportions that an Act was passed for the fiurpose of depriving the Common lnormer of any "profit" from his information. Apart from other considerations, the police are anxious to abolish the ancient institution as they are aware of tho abuses to which it is frequently put by unscrupulous persons. Jt is, as a great judge once described it, "the handmaid of blackmail."