§ MR. CALLANasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland, Whether his attention has been called to the sentence recently inflicted by a County Carlow Bench of Magistrates of a cumulative penalty of four pounds in each case, or two months' imprisonment, on a boy thirteen years of age for having killed, and aided and assisted his father to kill, a salmon—for which offences the father had also been sentenced to pay a like fine or undergo a similar period of imprisonment; and, whether it is a fact that on the occasion in question some of the occupants of the Bench were Slany River Conservators, at whose instance the prosecution had been taken, and who, therefore, were prosecutors in the case as well as judges?
§ MR. J. LOWTHERSir, I have inquired into this matter, and as to the sentences passed they appear to me to have been quite proper ones under the circumstances. It must be borne in mind that large profits are made as the result of successful salmon poaching on the extensive scale upon which it appears to be conducted in that and some other neighbourhoods. With respect to the last part of the Question, if the circumstances were as indicated, I think the matter would certainly justify inquiry, as it is the general law of the land that persons cannot be both prosecutors and judges in their own cases. It seems, however, that by some means which I am unable to explain, a special exception to the operation of this gene- 51 ral rule was introduced into some of the Fishery Acts, and, as a consequence, considerable public scandal has been caused—not in Ireland, however—by Conservators combining the positions of prosecutors and judges in their own cases. At the same time, I have no fear that such instances of want of good taste and feeling would be likely to be frequent among gentlemen occupying the position of magistrates; and, in this instance, I am happy to find that the prosecutions in question were instituted by a proprietor in his private capacity, and that, although some members of the Bench were Conservators, they were in no way connected with, or parties to, the prosecution.