Prosecution or Persecution.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 5013, 22 May 1889, Page 3

Prosecution or Persecution.

Beferring to a recent prosecution for breaches of the Beer Duty Act, the Nelson Mail says:—The Customs authorities are necessarily armed with very largo powers, but they ought to use them with some discretion. It is a great mistake when the law is,so used as to create general sympathy with an offender. There can be little doubt that such was the effect of the prosecution yesterday against a brewer at Motupipi. That a prosecution was necessary and right is obvious. The defendant, by advice of his counsel, mado no attempt to deny that there had been a breach of the law, and it was clearly the duty of the Custom House officers to lay an information. But the thing was done on far too big a scale. The brewery was a very little one, probably one of the smallest in the colony, and the total amount of which the revenue oonld have been deprived by the admitted irregularities was very trifling. Yet the number of charges laid, and the fines which could hare been inflicted if they had all been pressed, would have been a severe punishment to a wealthy man. No fewer than sixteen charges were laid, pretty well all the penal clauses of the Beer Duty Act being made use of. They were all dropped except five, but those five were selected with some care. If the Customs had chosen to press other of the charges laid under different clauses of the Act the fine would have been smaller or the Magistrate would have had power to reduce it. As it was ho had no option. The only course before him was to inflict a penalty of not less than £SO in each case. He also had to slay the slain even more than thrice. The Act states that for each offence under the 29th clause the plant and stock of beer must forfeited, so that in yesterday’s case the property was forfeited five times. There is a Scotch proverb about the difficulty in taking the breeks off a highlander, but no one has ever imagined the possibility of trying to take them off four times. Nothing cancels a debt to the Crown, not even bankruptcy, so that unless the Customs remit part of the fines imposed the defendant in the case is likely to be a debtor to Her Majesty to the end of hia life. The local customs authorities are not to blame in the matter as they were acting under instructions from Wellington, but whoever gave the instructions showed very little eense.