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199
[1908
Now, Mr. Courthope-Munroe defends, and it is part of his argument that I do not
like at all, and that I feel bound to protest against on the great public principles a good
deal of this by saying, " Oh, these bye-laws might be harsh and improper and unjust
if they were applied all round" (and they might in some cases be so), "but the Borough
Council, or whatever the Local Authority is, must be trusted only to put the law in
motion in such cases in which it would be reasonable to do so." Now, to begin with,
the Borough Council are not the only persons who are entitled to put the law in motion ;
every subject of the Crown is. And to go on with it, 1 do not like legislation which is
felt to be so unfair, applying it all round, that it requires to be justified by saying that in
particular cases it would not be enforced. I think that it is as bad a ground upon which
to defend legislation as you could very well have. Now I pass from that part of the
case just to say one word about this first week in April. Of course, I feel fully the force
of a great deal my Lord has said. One constantly knows the principles to be applied,
but it is the application of principles which raises the difficulty.
What I feel in this particular case is that it is hardly right to say that this can be
a proper period because it is fixed by the local authoiity, to whom great discretion is
necessarily committed, if it does lead in particular instances, which are not chimerical
at all, to an almost preposterous state of the law. In one of the cases—I think it is the
Islington case, but I only mention it because it shows that sometimes illustrations are
not away from the point—we have had mentioned that the work which was required to
be done would take a couple of men from ten days to a fortnight, working all day, to get
through it. It is a fact which the Borough Council ought to have known, that Easter
does very commonly fall very early in April, so as to embrace part of the first week in
April within its operation. I am told that in this very present year there are really four
days out of the seven which are allowed which are practically excluded, and one knows
perfectly well that it is all very well to talk about four days—there are one or two more
days when the British workman will not work if he can help it, and the result, as it
seems to me, is, that the person may be called upon to do in two or three days, and if
they do not do it he will be liable to a penalty, that which would be sufficiently extensive
to require several men something between a week and a fortnight. I do not think that a
bye-law which can have that operation has received the consideration of its applicability
to practical purposes that it ought to have received. There seems to me to be no
sort of difficulty in meeting all the objections that have been raised to these bye-laws,
and in making them, if they are re-cast, really reasonable. For the reason I have mentioned,
there seems to me that in the Stepney case it is clear that the bye-law cannot be
sustained.
In regard to the other case, it is not so bad a case, because the Council there have
attempted to meet some of the difficulties, in the first place, by putting a much more
moderate meaning on the word "landlord," and in the second place by attempting to
provide for the exemption from the operation of the bye-laws of certain cases in which
it seems reasonable enough that they should be exempt, but it has not gone far enough
for the reasons which my Lord has pointed out.
Even that modified definition of "landlord" is open to objection, and I quite agree
with the criticisms which he has passed upon that and upon other parts of these byelaws.
What I have said about the first week in April, of course, applies to both of
them. I do say it is impossible to frame a set of bye-laws which should deal with both
classes of tenements together, and I should be very far from saying that I should hold
bye-laws wrong or unreasonable because they did not attempt to differentiate between
them, but I should certainly like to throw out for the consideration of those who have to