.jpg)
Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 2
[New Zealand law regulating imprints]
The New Zealand law regulating imprints is monstrous and tyrannical, and might have been especially framed to afford opportunities of gratifying personal mslice. Its exemptions are absurd—all « commercial » work, which may include trade « dodgers » of an offensive description—require no imprint; but to issue the simplest ordinary job which is not of a « business » kind without an imprint subjects the inadvertent printer to a heavy fine. We have not met with a single case in which a penalty has been imposed where the law was not vindictively set in force by a private enemy of the printer. A gross case has occurred in Christchurch, where Mr C. C. Somers was fined £10 for printing and publishing, and Mr C. R. Woledge was fined £5 for distributing a leaflet entitled « Gambling, » which was shewn to be entirely unobjectionable in character. We hope this piece of injustice may lead to a reform in the law. The only possible ground upon which an imprint is made compulsory, is that libellous or otherwise objectionable publications may be kept in check, and traced to their source. In many kinds of work the provision is an irksome one, and the exemptions are just those in which it is most fitting that the printer's name should appear. We think no exemption of any kind should be made; and where, from any cause, the imprint is inadvertently omitted, it should be in the discretion of the court, if the work is of a legitimate kind, to inflict a nominal penalty, and make the informant liable for costs. This would put a stop to the present state of things, by which the machinery of justice is perverted to carry out the evil purposes of personal animosity.