COMPENSATION AND CONFISCATION.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume IX, Issue 682, 2 April 1903, Page 21

COMPENSATION AND CONFISCATION.

' The New Zealand Mail, referring to MrBalfour’s remarks to a deputation of the English trade, that he hoped the Court of Quarter Sessions would reverse th® most extravagant decisions, of the licensing Magistrates closing hotels, says • “Here we have, it is clear, a'number of Magistrates entrusted with power, exercising that power in accordance not with the law that regulates the liquor . traffic, but with their own views of what the liquor law ought to be. 'Phis is, the greatest fault that it is possible tor a judicial authority to commit. That authority, it must be remembered, is where ; he is to administer the law as it is. To read something into the law which is not there, and decide according to that non-existent provision, is a breach of the i law all the more flagrant because it strikes at the root of all laws. To fully . appreciate the magnitude! of that, evil one ' has but to extend the practice over the whole field occupied by the Courts of every jurisdiction. The result would be j that every statute would be broken by, the unprincipled process of reading into I it that which it does not contain. To | permit conduct like that of the i Magistrates condemned by Mr BalfouU would go a long way towards installing:

anarchy in. the high places of justice. That consideration amply justifies his conduct. That conduct was amazing, certainly, but the injustice of the Magistrates was so amazingly exceptional as to call for some such protest. “ The case has an exceedingly important bearing here, both incidental and direct. Incidentally, of course, it raises th® question of compensation, bids us reflect that deprivation of legal rights without • compensation is confiscation ; reminds us that here all our statutes but one, , for the extinction of private rights, provide for the fullest compensation, as ascertained by the fairest means : points to the conclusion that the exception is unjust : and recalls the fact that the greatest statesmen and most impartial intellects have been distinctly of the opinion that local option can only be justified by. compensation. This incidental bearing of the case is, of course, not a matter of immediate consequence ; it can wait for Parliamentary discussion. With the direct Parliamentary discussion. With the direct of immediate general voting. A committee for the regulation of the liquor traffic has to be elected in a few days for every licensing district in this country. In mosltii distrficts) are two bodies: of men offering themselves for election. One consists entirely of men pledged generally to utterly destroy the liquor traffic root and branch, the other prepared to administer the liquor law according to the spirit in which that law was framed by the Legislature. The former have declared their readiness to do likewise, it is true ; but their bias is undeniable, and more than probably ineradicable. The very fact of their candidature is a proof that their bias is not only ineradicable but Yampant. It riiay be reasonably taken for granted, therefore, that if elected they will in their collective capacity repeat the behaviour which has brought down upon the Magistrates the righteous Wrath of the Prime Minister of Great Britain.”