such part only shall be considered a common lodging-house. The act does not extend to Scotland or the city of London. Its execution within the metropolitan police district is vested in the police commissioners of the metropolis; in the country, in municipal corporations, or local boards of health, or, where none such, in justices of peace, acting in petty sessions.

Expenses of executing the act in the metropolis to form part of the general expenses of the police acts; in the country, to be charged under the expenses of the local boards of health, or the borough fund, or improvement act, or if executed by justices, to form part of the general expenses of the constablewick of the place.

By s. 6, notice is to be given to the keepers of common lodginghouses by the local authority administering the act, that unless their houses be registered, they will be liable to a penalty of £5 for every lodger taken pending non-register. Register to be kept by local authority, specifying situation of house, and number of lodgers allowable to be kept. Houses to be inspected, and lodgers not taken till one month after notice given. Regulations may be made by local authority within the limits of the Board of Health Act, and fines levied for neglect of them. If fever, or any contagious or infectious disease, be in a house, notice must be given by keeper to some officer of local authority, and also to the poor law medical officer, and relieving officer of the union or parish. Keeper of lodging-house thoroughly to cleanse all the rooms, passages, stairs, floors, windows, doors, walls, ceilings, privies, cesspools, and drains, to the satisfaction and conformable to the regulations of local authority, and limewash the walls and ceilings in the first week of the months of October and April in every year, s. 13. Penalty on keeper for neglect of regulations, or for not giving notice if any person be confined to his bed by fever, or infectious or contagious disease, 40s. for every day the offence continues; penalty irrespective of other penalties in other acts for like offences.

The provisions of the above act have been extended by 16 & 17 V. c. 41. All common lodging-houses are to be registered before being used, and to be kept only by registered keepers. Local authority may refuse to register houses, if keeper do not produce certificate of character signed by three inhabitant householders within the parish, each rated to the value of six pounds or upwards. Local authority empowered to require an additional supply of water to common lodging-houses. By s. 7, provisions are made pertaining to removal of sick lodgers to hospitals, &c. Reports may be ordered from keepers of houses. Town councillors, &c., required to remove causes of complaint, certified under Nuisances Removal Act, &c. Keepers of common lodging-houses, for a third offence, may be disqualified for keeping the same for five years. See too 29 & 30 V. c. 90.

CHAPTER XXV.

Hawkers, Pedlars, and Old Metal Dealers.

HAWKERS are itinerant traders, who proclaim their wares through the streets or from town to town. A pedler is a hawker who deals in trifling or inferior commodities. Either from a regard to the revenue laws, or from a desire to encourage the more open and regular pursuits of the settled trader, the legislature has shown considerable jealousy of hawkers and pedlers, and placed their avocations under strict penal regulation.

By the 50 G. 3, c. 41, hawkers and pedlers are to pay an annual license duty of £4; and if they travel with a horse, ass, or other beast bearing or drawing burthen, they are subject to an additional duty of £4 for each beast so employed. Unless householders or residents in the place, they are not allowed to sell by auction, whereby the highest bidder is deemed the purchaser; penalty £50, half to the informer, half to the queen. But nothing in the act extends to hinder any person from selling, or exposing for sale, any sort of goods in any public market or fair.

Every hawker, before he is licensed, must produce a certificate of good character and reputation, signed by the clergyman and two reputable inhabitants of the place where he usually resides. He must have inscribed, in Roman capitals, on the most conspicuous part of every pack, box, trunk, case, cart or other vehicle, in which he shall carry his wares, and on every room and shop in which he shall trade, and likewise on every handbill which he shall distribute, the words, "Licensed Hawker." Penalty, in default, £10. Unlicensed persons wrongfully using this designation forfeit £10.

Hawkers dealing in smuggled goods, or in goods fraudulently or dishonestly procured, are punishable by forfeiture of license, and incapacity to obtain one in future.

Hawkers trading without license are liable to a penalty of £10. So, also, if they refuse to show their license, on the demand of any person to whom they offer goods for sale, or on the demand of any justice, mayor, constable, or other peace officer, or any officer of the customs or excise. By 5 G. 4, c. 83, hawkers trading without a license are punishable as vagrants.

To forge or counterfeit a hawker's license incurs a penalty of £300. To lend or hire a hawker's license subjects lender and borrower to a penalty of £40 each, and the license becomes forfeited. But the servant of a licensed hawker may travel with the

license of his master, provided he usually reside in the house of his employer as a member of his family, 10 B. & C. 66.

Hawkers trading without a license are liable to be seized and detained by any person, who may give notice to a constable, in order to their being carried before a justice of the peace. Constables refusing to assist in the execution of the act are liable to a penalty of £10.

Nothing in the act extends to prohibit persons from selling fish, fruit, or victuals; nor to hinder the maker of any home manufacture from exposing his goods to sale in any market or fair, and in every city, borough, town corporate, and market town; nor any tinker, cooper, glazier, plumber, harness-maker, or other person, from going about and carrying the materials necessary to his business.

By 22 & 23 V. c. 36, a hawker's license is not required by the maker or worker of goods, who carries them abroad or exposes them to sale. S. 4 empowers justices, on conviction of a hawker, to mitigate the penalty to one-fourth.

A single act of selling, as a parcel of handkerchiefs to a particular person, is not sufficient to constitute a hawker within the meaning of the statute, Rex. v. Little, Bur. 613.

By the 52 G. 3, c. 108, no person being a trader in any goods, wares, or manufactures of Great Britain, and selling the same by wholesale, shall be deemed a hawker; and all such persons or their agents, selling by wholesale only, may go from house to house, to any of their customers who sell again by wholesale or retail, without being subject to any of the penalties contained in any act touching hawkers, pedlers, and petty chapmen.

Hawkers exposing their goods to sale in a market town must do it in the market-place, 4 T. R. 272.

Persons hawking tea without a license are liable to a penalty, under 50 G. 3; and, even with a license, they would be liable to a penalty for selling tea in an unentered place, 2 B. & C. 142.

The duty on hawkers, however, was abolished by 33 & 34 V. c. 32, and the trade is now regulated by the Pedlars' Act, 1870, 33 & 34 V. c. 72.

DEALERS IN OLD METAL.

For the better protection of merchant shipping against fraudu lent practices in respect of marine stores, this class of dealers are. regulated by an act of 1861, the 24 & 25 V. c. 110, under which they are required to keep a register of purchases and sales. They must also give notice of change of place of business; they must not buy except between the hours of 9 A.M. and 6 P.M., nor of any person under sixteen years of age; they must give notice to the police without delay of the purchase of any article of which information has been given that it has been stolen or embezzled; and

they must not alter the form, in any way, of articles purchased for a period of forty-eight hours after being received. These provisions are enforced by penalties, extending to imprisonment with hard labour. (See also 32 & 33 V. c. 99.)

CHAPTER XXVI.

Army, Militia, Volunteers, and Navy.

I. ARMY.

THE Crown, with regard to military offences, has considerable legislative power; for the sovereign, by the Annual Mutiny Act, may form articles of war and constitute courts-martial, with power to try crimes by such articles, and inflict penalties by judgment of the same, not inconsistent with the provisions of the Mutiny Act, nor extending to transportation, or to life or limb, except for crimes expressly declared to be so punishable by the act.

The Mutiny Act comprises a series of regulations which are annually enacted by the imperial parliament for the government of the military forces of Great Britain and Ireland. It was first

passed in 1689, from which period it has varied in many of its provisions, but has been uniform in all its principal points: such as the dependence of a standing army on the consent of parliament, and the subjection of military men generally to the responsibilities and processes of the ordinary law.

By the Mutiny Act, it is provided that every officer or private who shall excite or join any mutiny, or knowing of it shall not give notice to the commanding officer, or shall desert, or enlist in any other regiment, or sleep upon his post, or leave it before he is relieved, or hold correspondence with a rebel or enemy, or strike or use violence to his superior officer, or disobey his lawful commands, the offender shall suffer death or such other punishment as the court-martial may inflict.

The Mutiny Act, as already stated, does not exempt the military from being proceeded against by the ordinary course of criminal justice; and any officer or private guilty of any crime must be delivered over to the civil power: a commanding officer refusing or neglecting would be cashiered.

No court-martial now has power, for any offence committed during the time of peace within the Queen's dominions, to sentence any soldier to corporal punishment, provided that any courtmartial may sentence any soldier while on active service in the field or on board any ship not in commission to corporal punishment for mutiny, misbehaviour, or neglect of duty.

A court-martial may sentence to death, penal servitude, or imprisonment, with or without hard labour, according to the nature

Y

of the offence. A common-law court cannot, as a court of review or error, affect the position of the court-martial.

By the Mutiny Act, 33 V. c. 7, s. 88, officers destroying game or fish in or near where they may be quartered in the United Kingdom, without leave from those entitled to grant leave, to forfeit £5.

A person receiving enlistment money from an officer or soldier attested and on the recruiting service, is declared duly enlisted; but, on application to a magistrate within four days after, and the payment of 20s. with expenses, he may be again discharged.

In 1852 a person upon whom a soldier had been billeted, instead of accommodating the soldier in his own house, offered to provide him with quarters elsewhere; but the soldier refused to avail him self of it, and brought an action for billet-money. The justices were unable to come to a decision, and they agreed to refer the case to the secretary at war. In the answer received from the War Office, the magistrates were informed that the householder upon whom the soldier had been billeted was not bound to receive the soldier into his own house; and that, having offered to provide quarters for him elsewhere, the householder had satisfied the obligations imposed upon him by law. See BILLETING, p. 243.

EXEMPTIONS OF THE MILITARY FROM CIVIL LIABILITIES.-A person who enlists into the regular army contracts to serve either at home or abroad in his military capacity, and at any time his services may be required. To enable him more effectually to fulfil these engagements, and prevent his being withdrawn from his duties, the law has conceded to him certain privileges, not enjoyed by the rest of the community. For instance, he is not bound by any contract by parol or in writing, or punishable for leaving any work or employer; nor is he liable to be arrested or summoned for any debt under £30, nor to be prosecuted for offences by the civil power, except on charges of felony or misdemeanor. These exemptions have been continued by the Mutiny Act of 1870, and by s. 40 it is provided that no soldier shall be proceeded against for "not maintaining his family, or for having deserted any wife, child, or children, legitimate or illegitimate, or other relation, &e." Lately, a soldier in the Life Guards was summoned before the Marlborough-street magistrate, for refusing to support an illegitimate child. Mr. Hardwick took time to consider, and then pronounced his decision, that the Mutiny Act had deprived him of jurisdiction, and that he could render no assistance. The young woman asked if she had no remedy in law. Mr. Hardwick said he knew of none.

The Mutiny Act is applicable to all persons employed in the recruiting service; to the forces intended for service in India while in any part of the United Kingdom, and till their arrival in the territories of Hindostan ; to the officers and men employed in the service of the artillery or engineers, in the corps of sappers

and