ONE LAW FOR THE PUBLIC, AND ANOTHER FOR THE PUBLICAN.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XIII, Issue 772, 22 December 1904, Page 43

ONE LAW FOR THE PUBLIC, AND ANOTHER FOR THE PUBLICAN.

(Loudon “ L.V. Gazette.”)

An eminent judicial humorist has dissipated once for all the fallacy that we have one law for the rich and another for the poor, and the assertion could, we doubt not, be as easily refuted that there exists separate laws for the public and publican. But if we needed an example of law dispensing to prove that the practice of the justices differentiates between the two classes, we could not find a better one than the recent Ram lon shooting affair, which has ended in the acquittal of the defendants. ‘ The facts of the case may be briefly recapitulated here for future reference. In September last the Ram Inn, which is situated at North Tedworth, Salisbury Plain, and supplies the alcoholic requirements of some 3000 workmen, who are employed upon the construction of the new military barracks in the vicinity, was the scene of a disturbance caused by a quarrel among the customers. As the manager and his barman were unable to restore ' order among their undesirable visitors they cleared the house and barred the door against them. They acted, thus far, for the protection of their property, or, rather, the property of their employers. But the mob resented this interference with their liberties, and made an assault upon the house. If the attack had succeeded the ruffians would doubtless have made short work of the stock and its guardians. The two men were opposed to an infuriated crowd, and their lives were in immediate danger. They endeavoured to frighten their assailants by bring over the heads of the mob, and if they had directed their fire against the besiegers themselves they would have been acting in strict accordance with the law.

But they did not resort to this extreme, and it was by a sheer accident, caused by one of the bricks with which they were being bombarded striking a gun, that the shot was fired which mortally wounded one of the attacking party. The manager and his assistant were, on the automatic finding of the coroner’s jury, charged with manslaughter, and on the prima facie evidence that was given in the magistrate’s court they should have been discharged forthwith. We maintain that if they had been two private members of the community that is what would have happened.

Three months prior to this occurrence a similar disturbance at Seathwaite, North Lancashire, attended by the same fatal ■consequences, was dismissed at this stage •of the proceedings. It was shown in this latter case that the rioters, having wrecked the bar and helped themselves to the alcoholic stores, varied the programme by paying a devastating visit to the church and vicarage before proceeding to finish their labours at the hotel. But on their return they found the publican prepared to resist further spoliation, and one man was shot dead before the wreckers dispersed. The magistrate before whom the licensed victualler was c harged declared that the man was fully justified by law in using firearms as a last resource in the protection of life and property. That is the law, and that is the only reasonable applicatian of it. But the magistrate in the Tedworth affair did not act in accordance with this practice, and sent the case for trial. Six weeks later, at the Salisbury Assizes the men were again tried for manslaughter and acquitted.

There could have been no other verdict. The facts were plain ; the evidence was conclusive ; the law on the point is undisputed. If the men had been actingin defehce of a private house, or a church, or a sanitary laundry, or any other description of property, they would have been discharged by the magistrate in the first place ; but because they were in charge of licensed premises they were placed upon a different footing by the dispenser of justice, and were committed for trial.

It may be argued that as the ultimate result was an acquittal, which restored the men to freedom and exonerated them from blame, the .. law has not been abused ; but a glance at the material conditions disposes of this line of justification. For several weeks they rested under the stigma of manslaughter, they were put to the trouble of surrendering themselves at the Assizes, and the expense of employing counsel to defend them in a trial which should never have taken place.

The law as it stands had justified them, and the magistracy was empowered to deal with the ouestion and relieve them without delay of the stain which the charge itself puts upon them. The law goes even further than to hold them guiltless for their act ; it grants them a license to trade with the stipulation that they shall suppress such a disorder as the one they were endeavouring to the best -of their ability to cope with, when the

excesses of the rioters brought about the fatal accident. If the manager of the Ram Inn and his assistant had done less than the evidence showed them to have done they would have been responsible to the law for gross negligence in the execution of their public duties, and because they did not do less they were put to the greatest trouble and humiliation possible in justifying their course of conduct. Such a hardship is one which will entitle the men to the sympathy of all right-think-ing people, and illustrates a method of preferential law dispensing which cannot be too strongly deprecated.