THE POWERS OF LICENSING COMMITTEES.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 7407, 7 May 1891, Page 2

THE POWERS OF LICENSING COMMITTEES.

« (Post.) The Prohibitionists who have carried the Licensing elections in Oamaru and Sydenham will probably have to defend in tho Courts their legal right to carry out their programme of closing all the public-houses in their districts. They have been elected to a judicial position and are bound to deal with the cases brought before them in a judicial manner. It is not their province to make the law, but to administer it as it has been made, and as the Legislature has especially refrained from conferring on the ratepayers the right of direct local option it is scarcely to be assumed that it intended to give the power indirectly, through the election of Committees, to administer the Act. The very means by which the Prohibitionists succeeded in carrying the elections, the avowed intention of the elected candidates to close all houses and to render the Act authorising the issue of licenses a dead letter, in persuance of a preconceived general determination, irrespective of the merits of particular cases, may have the effect of causing them to be estopped in gi ving effect to their policy. An important decision on the powers of those vested with statutory duties in regard to the issue of lieeDses has recently been given in England. It was an appeal from the Court of Appeal to the House of Lords, on tho question of whether licensing justices possess a discretionary power to refuse to renew a license because they think there ia no longer any necessity for a licensed house in the neighbourhood, or because the premises are remote from police supervision. The Houso of Lords held that the gtanting or refusal of licenses or renewals was within the discretion of the Bench, but this decision was given with qualifications. The Lord Chancellor, in delivering judgment, remarked that " the power confided to the Justices in their capaoity as Juatieeß was to bo exercised judicially, and their "discretion" meant, when it was used, that something was to be done according to the rules of reason and justice, and not to private opinion—according to the law, and not humour. It was not to be arbitrary, vaguej or fanciful, but legal and regular, and it must be exercised undor a limit to which an honest man, competent to the discharge, of his office, ought to confine himself." This definition of the discretion of the licensing authority would aee»u to preclude the refusal of all licenses, in pursuance of election pledges given, or opinions formed, without taking evidence. Such refusal would not appear consistent with " the rules of reason or of justice," or according to law, aB opposed to humour, but distinctly " arbitrary, vague, and fanciful," and according to " private [opinion." The whole of the Law Lords were clear that licenses could not be refused on other than reasonable grounds and in a strictly judicial manner. The Lord Chancellor emphatically stated '• that a disoretion which empowered Justices to grant licenses to innkeepers, as in the exercise of their discretion they thought proper, would not be exeroised by coining to a general resolution to refuse a license to anybody who would' 1 not consent to take out an Excise license for the sale of spirits." And he added: "The Legislature has ■ given credit to the magistrates for exercising a judicial discretion that they will fairly decide the questions submitted to them, and not by evasions attempt to r«peal the lam which permits piMichouses to exist, or evade it by a plain exposition of the reasons on which they aot." This is precisely adapted to the circumstances of the two cases we have mentioned — Oamaru and Sydenham. Another of the Judges, Lord Sannen, remarked «— " Instances have been brought before the Superior Court where Justices have expressed and acted upon a general intention with regard to all licenses, whereas it is their duty to consider each individual case on its own ' special merits." These principles apply equally to the Committees in Hew Zealand as to the Licensing Magistrates in England, and would doubtless be applied to the interpretation of the law here in any case brought before the Supreme Court. If so, the Prohibitionists will probably not find it quite so easy as they expect to carry their extreme views into effect.