§ Amendment reported (according to Order).
§ Clause 1:
§ Repeal of 5 & 6 Geo. 4.c. 41,s.2.
§ 1. Section two of the Gaming Act, 1835 (which makes money paid to the indorse, holder, or assignee of securities given for consideration arising out of certain gaming transactions recoverable from the person to whom the securities were originally given) is hereby repealed.
§ LORD MUIR MACKENZIE moved to add to the clause: "No trustee, executor, or other person acting in a representative or fiduciary capacity shall be under any obligation to make or enforce any claim under the said section in respect of any transaction completed before the passing of this Act, or be liable for any breach of duty by reason of any failure to do so." The noble Lord said: My Lords, I prepared this Amendment in order to meet. the suggestion made by the noble Marquess, Lord Crewe, in the debate last night. I am very glad that he interposed to save various irresponsible innocents out of the wreck of the Bill in one import ant particular. Sine,' our last meeting I have heard that the Inland Revenue are already making inquiries as to whether this comes within their province.
§ I am glad to have received a courteous message from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Sumner, authorising me to inform the House, as lie is unable to be present himself, that he agrees with the Amendment which I have put down, and has no further objection to the Bill. While, therefore, I move the Amendment, I must add that I deplore this as a substitute for the words which were struck out of the Bill, and I charge myself with a certain error of judgment in not asking your Lordships to give a direct vote of approval of the Bill as introduced. I am sure that your Lordships agreed with the view which I presented to the House, and which was so powerfully reinforced from the Woolsack, as to the intolerable injustice of which any one would be guilty who took advantage of the law as it now stands, to the general amazement and dissatisfaction.
§ Amendment moved—
§ Clause 1, page 1, line 10, after (" repealed ") insert (" No trustee, executor, or other person acting in a representative or fiduciary capacity 188 shall be under any obligation to make or enforce any claim under the said section in respect of any transaction completed before the passing of this Act, or be liable for any breach of duty by reason of any failure to do so").—(Lord Muir Mackenzie.)
§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT BIRKENHEAD)My Lords, the short effect of the change made in the Bill is simply this that in future, if the Bill becomes law, no person w Ito pays a gaming loss by cheque can recover that payment in the Law Courts; and, in the second place, that no person who, in consequence of the recent decision, would otherwise in a representative capacity be compellable by law to institute proceedings in respect of past payments by cheque, will if this Bill becomes law, be so compellable. On the merits of the two cases those of the noble Lord who moved the Amendment and of his critic, 1 agree with the former, and the reason for the advice which I gave him yesterday was simply that I was convinced that if there were to be a difference of opinion and a Division, there was not the slightest possibility of the Bill becoming law at all. I do not know if there is much possibility now, but at any rate it was better to have sonic chance than none at all, or so it seemed to me.
I agree with him upon the merits of the Bill. It seems to me that to say that there is something revolutionary in forbidding a man from taking advantage of a legal rule of which he was not aware, the assertion of which is in the individual unmeritorious and not beneficial to the public, is the merest pedantry, and if I had thought any useful purpose was to be gained by pursuing the controversy, I should have pursued it with the noble and learned Lord yesterday.
§ On Question, Amendment agreed to.
§ [From Minutes of November 3.]