MR JUSTICE WILLIAMS ON BANK MANAGEMENT.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 890, 22 March 1889, Page 31

MR JUSTICE WILLIAMS ON BANK MANAGEMENT.

William Qazaly, late, teller at the Ballarat Branch of the Colonial Bank, was brought up at the Assizes on February oth before'Mr Justice "Williams, on the specific, oharge of embezzling LIOO, the property of the bank. His Efonor, in jaas.sjng. sgutgil.ee, said

I I have, unfortunately, had to try numbers of these charges against bank clerks in Melbourne, Sandhurst, Ballarat, and other places, and I almost invariably find that if the banks can succeed in wringing from the relatives of the criminal clerk—if thoy can succeed under pressure of a prosecution in wringing from the relatives sufficient to cover their monetary loss, they hold out the hope to the criminal that they will not prosecute, or what is equally futile, that they will do their best to get a light sentence for him. I do not hesitate to characterise (not this bank in particular, for most banks do it) such conduct as scandalous in the extreme. The banks are committing crime in so doing ; they are compounding felony, or they pretend that they will compound felony if the loss of their money is made good. They undertake not to press tho offence against tho criminal so long as they are recouped their money loss, and they make promises they know they cannot fulfil childish promises—iti their to extort from the relatives of the criminal clerk the equivalent of their money loss. They know that once a prosecution is in tho hands of tho Crown they cannot stop it, aucl they commit cruel misrepresentation upon the matter. And if a bank, knowing that a crime has been committed, promises that if the money is refunded they will not place the matter in the hands of the officers of justice,_ they commit the crime of compounding a felony, and the bank manager ought to be prosecuted. It is just as well that every bank clerk in this Colony, and every bank manager, should know that these felonies cannot be compounded, and that, no matter what reparation is made, the bank manager and the officers of the bank have no more power to get the offender off than the crier of this Court has. Let that be known to every bank manager and bank clerk in this Colony. I must say that, although I cannot agree with all that has been said by the learned counsel for the defence, I agree with a great portion of it. I feel that the clerks of every bank in. this Colony are most inadequately and wretchedly paid. They are expected to dress as gentlemen, conduct themselves as gqntlecaen, a,ud have every appearance of gentlemen, and they are paid in a way that is a disgrace to the institutions to vyhich (hey belongs.. And I say that tho same miserable economy the same miserable, cruel economy which prompts them to pay starvation wages to the gentlemen they take into their em-

ployment as bank clerks —is the same miserable, impolitic, cruel economy that causes the careless supervision they have over their clerks’ work in order that they may be able to return better profits to the directors and shareholders. _I do not hesitate to say, from my 'experience of the banks of this colony, that I would sooner put a son of mine to break stones on the road than make of him a bank clerk.

The prisoner was sentenced to two years and six months’ imprisonment with hard labour, in the Ballarat gaol, the first three days of every alternate month of the last twelve months in solitary con finement.