procurator fiscal, or of any private person, under the pro- 3. Every pecuniary penalty which is adjudged to be paid under this Section 4. FINES ACT (IRELAND), 1874. [37 & 38 VICT. CH. 72.] An Act to explain and amend the Fines Act (Ireland), 1851, and for other purposes relating thereto. [7th August 1874. WHEREAS by section ten of the Fines Act (Ireland), 1851, provisions. were made for the estreat of recognizances, and doubts have arisen as to whether the said provisions extend to sureties as well as to principal parties, and it is expedient to remove the said doubts : And whereas quarterly and monthly returns of proceedings in petty sessions, and of the appropriation of fees, fines, and penalties, are now by law required to be made by clerks of petty sessions in Ireland, and by reason of such monthly returns such quarterly returns are unnecessary, and it is expedient that the same should cease to be made: And whereas it is expedient to make provision for the recovery of penalties and with respect to offences in certain cases: Be it therefore enacted by the Queen's most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows: 1. This Act may be cited for all purpose as the Fines Act (Ireland), Sections 1, 2. 1851, Amendment Act, 1874, and the said Act and this Act may be cited together for all purposes as "The Fines Act (Ireland), 1851-1874." Short title. section 10 of 2. It is hereby declared that the provisions of section ten of the Meaning of Fines Act (Ireland), 1851, extend and authorise the assistant barrister, Fines Act recorder, or chairman therein mentioned, whenever he orders that any (Ireland), 1851, explained. Sections 2-5. recognizance which shall have been entered into by any person or persons as surety or sureties for any principal party shall be forfeited, in such order to state with respect not only to such principal party but also to such surety or sureties the amounts of such forfeiture, and to direct a warrant or warrants to issue to levy such amounts respectively from such surety or sureties in like manner as other penal sums are directed to be levied by the said Act. 3. From and after the passing of this Act section four of the Act passed in the session of Parliament held in the sixth and seventh years of the reign of His late Majesty William the Fourth, chapter thirty-four, relating to quarterly returns by clerks of petty sessions, shall be and the same is hereby repealed. 4. Every penalty recovered in respect of offences committed within the limits of the Galway Town Improvement Act, 1853, against section 12 of the Licensing Act, 1872, as applied to Ireland, shall be applied as follows-One half of such penalty shall go to the informer, and the remainder to the town commissioners, and if the town commissioners be the informers, they shall be entitled to the whole of said penalty. 5. Where by any Act now in force or hereafter to be passed it is enacted that penalties, offences, or proceedings thereunder may be recovered, prosecuted, or taken in a summary manner, and no further provision with respect thereto is contained in such Act, then such penalties, offences, and proceedings shall be recoverable, may be prosecuted, or taken with respect to the police district of Dublin metropolis, subject and according to the provisions of any Act regulating the powers and duties of justices of the peace for such district, or of the police of such district; and with respect to other parts of Ireland, before a justice or justices of the peace sitting in petty sessions, subject and according to the provisions of "The Petty Sessions (Ireland) Act, 1851," and any Act amending the same. Sections 1-2. Short title. Commencement of Act. CONSPIRACY, AND PROTECTION OF PROPERTY [38 & 39 VICT. CH. 86.] An Act for amending the Law relating to Conspiracy, and to the Protection of Property, and for other purposes. [13th August 1875. BE it enacted by the Queen's most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows: 1. This Act may be cited as the Conspiracy, and Protection of Property Act, 1875. 2. This Act shall come into operation on the first day of September one thousand eight hundred and seventy-five. Conspiracy, and Protection of Property. Sections 3, 4. Amendment 3. An agreement or combination by two or more persons to do or procure to be done any act in contemplation or furtherance of a trade of law as to dispute between employers and workmen shall not be indictable as a conspiracy conspiracy if such act committed by one person would not be punishable disputes. as a crime. Nothing in this section shall exempt from punishment any persons guilty of a conspiracy for which a punishment is awarded by any Act of Parliament. Nothing in this section shall affect the law relating to riot, unlawful assembly, breach of the peace, or sedition, or any offence against the State or the Sovereign. A crime for the purposes of this section means an offence punishable on indictment, or an offence which is punishable on summary conviction, and for the commission of which the offender is liable under the statute making the offence punishable to be imprisoned either absolutely at the discretion of the court as an alternative for some other punishment. Where a person is convicted of any such agreement or combination as aforesaid to do or procure to be done an act which is punishable only on summary conviction, and is sentenced to imprisonment, the imprisonment shall not exceed three months, or such longer time (if any) as may have been prescribed by the statute for the punishment of the said act when committed by one person.* in trade Breach of employed in or water. 4. Where a person employed by a municipal authority or by any company or contractor upon whom is imposed by Act of Parliament the duty, or who have otherwise assumed the duty of supplying any tract by city, borough, town, or place, or any part thereof, with gas or water, persons wilfully and maliciously breaks a contract of service with that authority supply of gas or company or contractor, knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that the probable consequences of his so doing, either alone or in combination with others, will be to deprive the inhabitants of that city, borough, town, place, or part, wholly or to a great extent of their supply of gas or water, he shall on conviction thereof by a court of summary jurisdiction or on indictment as hereinafter mentioned, be liable either to pay a penalty not exceeding twenty pounds or to be imprisoned for a term not exceeding three months, with or without hard labour. Every such municipal authority, company, or contractor as is mentioned in this section shall cause to be posted up, at the gasworks or waterworks, as the case may be, belonging to such authority or company or contractor, a printed copy of this section in some conspicuous place where the same may be conveniently read by the persons employed, and as often as such copy becomes defaced, obliterated, or destroyed, shall cause it to be renewed with all reasonable despatch. If any municipal authority or company or contractor make default in complying with the provisions of this section in relation to such notice as aforesaid, they or he shall incur on summary conviction a penalty not exceeding five pounds for every day during which such default continues, and every person who unlawfully injures, defaces, or covers up any notice so posted up as aforesaid in pursuance of this Act, shall be liable on summary conviction to a penalty not exceeding forty shillings. * Amended by Sect. 1 of the Trade Disputes Act, 1906. Sections 5-7. Breach of coninjury to persons or property. 5. Where any person wilfully and maliciously (a) breaks a contract of service or of hiring, knowing or having reasonable cause to believe tract involving that the probable consequences of his so doing, either alone or in combination with others, will be to endanger human life, or cause serious bodily injury, or to expose valuable property whether real or personal to destruction or serious injury, he shall on conviction thereof by a court of summary jurisdiction, or on indictment as hereinafter mentioned, be liable either to pay a penalty not exceeding twenty pounds, or to be imprisoned for a term not exceeding three months, with or without hard labour. Miscellaneous. 6. Where a master, being legally liable to provide for his servant or apprentice necessary food, clothing, medical aid, or lodging, wilfully and without lawful excuse refuses or neglects to provide the same, whereby the health of the servant or apprentice is or is likely to be seriously or permanently injured, he shall on summary conviction be liable either to pay a penalty not exceeding twenty pounds, or to be imprisoned for a term not exceeding six months, with or without hard labour. 7. Every person who, with a view to compel any other person to abstain from doing, or to do any act which such other person has a legal right to do or abstain from doing, wrongfully and without legal authority1. Uses violence to or intimidates (b) such other person or his wife or children, or injures his property; or (a) See section 15, post. 66 (b) An intimation conveyed in a letter to an employer that his shop would be picketed in language so threatening as to make such employer afraid " amounts to intimidation within the meaning of section 7 of this statute, whether the picketing amounts to an unlawful" watching or besetting" with in sub-section 4 of same or not. In this case J. had been summoned under this 7th section for that he "with a view to compel B. to do a certain act which B. had a legal right to do, namely, to take back certain workmen into said B.'s employment, did intimidate the said B." The facts were as follows:There had been a strike amongst the rivetters in B.'s employment, whereupon J., who was secretary to the Leeds National Union of Operative Boot and Shoe Rivetters and Finishers, wrote the following letter to B. :-" I have to inform you that the rivetters in your employ have determined not to again start work unless you are willing to start the whole of them. Should you refuse to start them all, the finishers will also be stopped, and your shop picketed until such time that you comply with the conditions above stated. : If you are agreeable to take back all end." B. refused to take back the men, and B.'s shop was ordered by the Union to be picketed. Two men paraded in turns before the front of the shop for three days. The picketers behaved in an orderly manner, and did not personally interfere with the workpeople going in and out of B.'s shop; but four to five hundred people assembled in the roadway outside the shop, and the police were called by B. to protect the shop from, as B. alleged, a well-grounded fear on B.'s part of violence. The magistrate found that on the above facts "intimidation " was proved, on the ground that the statement contained in J.'s letter that the shop would be picketed was a threat to watch and beset the house or place where a person carries on business, and therefore amounted to intimidation, and that if the letter was not intended to intimidate, it ought to have been couched so as merely to show the writer's wish to obtain or communicate information, but that a person receiving such a letter as this must have looked upon it as a threat to watch and beset the premises within subsection 4 of this 7th section. The magistrate having convicted J., it was held on a case stated that the conviction was right: Judge v. Bennett, 36 W. R. 103. Intimidation," says Stephen, J., (ib. 104), "is to use violence so as to 2. Persistently follows such other person about from place to place; or, 3. Hides any tools, clothes, or other property owned or used by such other person or deprives him of or hinders him in the use thereof; or 4. Watches or besets (c) the house or other place where such other person resides, or works, or carries on business, or happens to be, or the approach to such house or place; or, 5. Follows such other person with two or more other persons in a disorderly manner in or through any street or road, shall, on conviction thereof by a court of summary jurisdiction, or on indictment as hereinafter mentioned, be liable either to pay a penalty not exceeding twenty pounds, or to be imprisoned for a term not exceeding three months, with or without hard labour. make a person afraid. It is not brought about by actual threats of violence to a person or his property, but by attempting by any means to make that person afraid-in this particular instance of doing or not doing that which such person has a legal right to do or refuse to do. If a man expresses his intention to picket in such terms as to make the person addressed afraid, that is sufficient to bring his action within the meaning of intimidation. I can imagine that such intention to picket might be conveyed in such terms as to show that there was no intention to do anything within the terms of this Act. Here this determination was conveyed in such a way as to cause fear. That is equivalent to intimidation, and this conviction must be upheld." "Intimidation," says Smith, J. (ib. 104), "is not merely to use violence or to threaten to use violence. Sub-section 1 of section 7 shows this. It says, every one. who uses violence or intimidates. What is the meaning of intimidates'? Why, the using of language which causes another man to fear. During a cotton spinners' strike, S. and other pickets stood near the main entrance to the works, and on T. coming out a large crowd hooted and threw dung. S. silently followed T. about from place to place, but never spoke to T. S. was summoned and charged under this 7th section with persistently following T. with a view to compel him to abstain from work. magistrates having convicted S., the Court on a case stated upheld the conviction, on the ground that the mere fact of one man persistently dogging the footsteps of another is in itself evidence of intimidation. Pollock, B., said that the mere fact that S. was silently dogging the footsteps of T. showed that he was, in the words of this 7th section persistently following with a view to compel" Smith v. Thomasson, 88 L. T. Mis., 197; 54 J. P. 35. 66 The (c) In R. v. Hibbert, 13 Cox, 82, in which the parties were indicted under Coercion might be effected by physical force, by the operation of fear upon mind. It is possible that there might be such a molestation by watching and besetting premises as might be expected to and would operate upon the mind so as to take away liberty of will by giving rise to a fear of violence by threats, or to some apprehension of loss or ruin, or to feelings of annoyance. Picketing, that is, the watching and speaking to the workmen as they come and go from their employment to induce them to leave their service, is not necessarily unlawful, nor is it unlawful to use terms of persuasion towards them to accomplish that object; but if the watching and besetting is carried on to such a length and to such an extent that it occasions a dread of loss it would be unlawful." or In R. v. Druitt (10 Cox, 592), in which the parties were indicted for conspiracy by unlawful ways, contrivances, and stratagems, to impoverish H. P. and others in their trade and business, and to restrain the freedom of trade and personal action, Baron Bramwell, in his charge to the jury said (p. 600) : There was no right in this country under our laws so sacred as the right of personal liberty. No right of property capital, about which there had been so much declamation, was so sacred or so carefully guarded by the law of this land as that of personal liberty. But that liberty was not liberty of the body only, it was also a liberty of the mind and will; and the liberty of a man's mind and will to say how he should bestow himself and his means, his talents and his industry, was as much a subject of the law's protection as was that of his Section 7. |