§ MR. MACVEAGH (Down, S.)To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been drawn to the fact that the magistrates adjudicating in the Sheffield Police Court recently fined a labouring man 10s. for keeping a dog without a licence, the maximum penalty being £5; and that the same magistrates, in a case against a city magistrate for employing a male servant without a licence, only ordered the defendant to pay the costs, the maximum penalty being £20; and whether, seeing that the labouring man attended the Court and thus lost a day's wages, whilst the city magistrate did not 60 appear, that an arrangement was made that the name of the magistrate should not be called out in Court in the ordinary way and that it only transpired during the hearing of the case, and that in this case the licence duty had been evaded for some years, under the circumstances the fine imposed on the labouring man will be remitted.
(Answered by Mr. Secretary Akers-Douglas.) I shall be obliged if the hon. Member will give me further details as to the first of the two cases he mentions, which I have not been able to identify with certainty. I may say, however, that it is obvious that if the conviction was a proper one and the penalty was deserved, no reasons for remitting that penalty can be deduced from the conduct of the Bench in a different case. My inquiries into the second case—that of the magistrate who was summoned for keeping a man-servant without a licence—are not yet complete, and I shall be glad of a little longer time in which to finish them.