Appendix I.

The Local Option Poll.

(Daily Times, March 25, 1903.)

The Rev. P. B. Fraser was treading on somewhat thin ice when, in the course of the vigorous and able speech he delivered at Milton on Monday evening, he combated the conclusions which Mr Cruickshank, S.M., had formed upon the evidence that was laid before him at the recent inquiry concerning the validity of the Bruce local option poll. The magistrate, whose integrity was in no way impugned by him, "took an unreasonably narrow view of the law,' las judgment was "inconsistent with his judgment in the Mataura case, and also inconsistent with itself," he "bungled a bad law,' and his mind "appeared to have been completely obfuscated" by the "sophistical reasoning and nonsense" which counsel for the petitioner "pounded" into him. There is, it will be acknowledged, a delightful freshness and frankness about the way in which Mr Fraser expresses his opinion of the magistrate's judgment. But it is in good company that Mr Cruickshank suffers the sting of the biting criticism that is applied to his decision. Mr Justice Williams, by his ruling in the case three years ago, which decided that the inquiry into a petition impeaching the validity of a local option poll should be conducted under the provisions of the Regulation of Local Elections Act, has also come within the range of Mr Fraser's oratorical artillery. His Honor, we are assured by this authority, not only nodded over the case in question but went "clean asleep," and the product of his slumbers has been "a mass of inconsistencies, legal quibbles, sophistries, and heartbreaks." This is undoubtedly very pretty rhetoric, and it will, it may be assumed, be appreciated as such by the Bruce electors: but it does not seem to have occurred to Mr Eraser, or if it did he does not seem to have made sufficient allowance for the fact, that the judge and the magistrate had both to administer the law as they found it. The law may be, as it is, full of inconsistencies, but that is the fault of the Legislature, the body representative of the people, and not the fault of the Bench. Mr Fraser forgets, moreover, that the decision of Mr Justice Williams, which he regards as "the source of all their troubles," was, unlike Mr Cruickshank's finding on the petition challenging the validity of the local option poll, subject to review. And the fact that it stands to this day as the authoritative statement of the law concerning the procedure to be followed in the case of a contention regarding the validity of a poll should suggest to him the possibility that the view Mr Justice Williams took in arriving at his judgment has obtained the substantial concurrence of the lawyers of the country. A layman's knowledge of the law and of the principles to be applied in the interpretation of statutes is not usually to be preferred to that of a trained lawyer, and Mr page 28 Fraser makes an abundant display of courage—the quality of which he deplores the absence in Mr Cruickshank—when he ridicules the decision of a distinguished judge who has occupied a seat on the Supreme Court Bench for a generation and has been noted as much for his conspicuous perspicacity as for his absolute impartiality. Mr Fraser would apparently have the inquiry conducted, as the law provides, in terms of "The Regulation of Local Elections Act, 1876," and the matter in dispute determined as if the poll had been an electoral poll. It is one of the most surprising things he ever heard of, he says, that any other course should be adopted. But it is perhaps not so absurd as he supposes, or so absurd as the very course he favours would be. "To enact that an inquiry should be held under one set of sections and that the decision should be given on principles altogether inconsistent with those expressed in the sections under which the inquiry is to be held would be an absurdity." These words are used by Mr Justice Williams in the decision with which Mr Fraser finds fault. Possibly Mr Fraser may, when he has been able to look more closely into the question, agree that even his interpretation of the law is not unassailable.

Mr Fraser is on firm ground, however, when he demands that the will of the people as expressed at the local option poll shall be respected, &c.