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morally responsible, without safeguarding them before they can be made liable for a
criminal offence. The words are: " The landlord of a lodging-house shall in the
first week of the month of April in every year, cause every part of the premises to
be cleansed, and Bye-law 19 says : " Any person who shall offend against anv
of the foregoing bye-laws shall be liable for every such offence to a penalty of £5."
Now, the word " cause " is, of course, the word that gives rise to the difficulty. If
" cause " could be construed to mean " take reasonable steps,'' that is to say, make
a contract with his tenants, or something of that kind, the same difficulty would
not have arisen; but I think very properly in the interests of sanitation and in
the interest of the good working of this kind of Act, " cause " does not mean merely
"take steps," but "shall see that the thing is done." Therefore, we have the byelaw
providing that the person upon whom the duty is cast has to see the thing is
done. Now I turn back to " landlord," and I find that " landlord " in these bye-laws
includes in relation to a house or part of a house which is let in lodgings or occupied
by members of more than one family, the person (whatever may be the nature
or extent of his interest in the premises, and whether he resides on the premises
or not) who receives or is entitled to receive the rack-rent of a lodging-house. Now,
I do not read the definition of " keeper " from these bye-laws for the moment, because
I quite agree that there would be less objection to the bye-law if it were
confined to a person who really had what I may call the personal management of
the house. Therefore I come to the conclusion that the bye-law in both cases is
bad, because it does not provide for the person who is going to be made subject to
the charge receiving notice in cases in which, under many circumstances, he may
not, so to speak, have, what I may call, the ordinary means of knowing whether or
not the law has been fulfilled.
I now come to that part of the case which has given us more difficulty—or at
any rate given me more difficulty-—and upon which I am not quite sure that we are
all agreed. Speaking for myself and myself only, I should not have been disposed
to interfere with this finding on the ground that the period taken was the end of
the first week in April. The Statute says that they are to make bye-laws for
cleansing and limewasliing the premises at- stated times. Undoubtedly I think that
does mean fix dates when about it should be done. I trust that if the bye-laws
come to be reconsidered, the objections, which seem to me to be very strong
objections, to the taking of this particular period, which my brother Wills has
pointed out in the course of the argument, will be considered. I can well imagine
that a week at the end of April or a fortnight at the beginning of May, or anything
of that kind, would remove all those objections; but why I should not have
been disposed to interfere on that ground is, that that does not seem to me exactly
one of the things in which the knowledge and experience of the Local Authority,
who have to fix a stated time, ought to prevail, unless some, what I may call very
grave objections, so serious as to amount to an objection in law, or some strong unreasonableness,
in fact, prevails. While I have been very much impressed by the