Notes from Northern Ireland.
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By Ulsterman.
An Important Decision. rpHE King's Bench Division of the Northern High
Court has decided that Belfast magistrates who held that they were bound to endorse the licence of a driver convicted of a first offence under section 1, subsection 1, of the Ulster Motor Vehicles Act of 1926 were in error. The Lord Chief Justice held that endorsement is compulsory only on a second or subsequent conviction, adding that, in his opinion, the defendant should get his costs. But it was stated by the Attorney-General that in such cases "the Crown neither receives nor Pays costs."
The Provincial Conference.
That the motor trade has found favour in the eyes of the Ulster 'government was strikingly proved during the visit of the M.T.A. and M.A.A. delegates to the capital of Ulifer. Not only did prominent members of the Government attend the luncheon given by the Ulster division and speak in terms of high praise about B30 the beneficent work and the marvellous growth of the motor trade, but the head of the Government, Viscount Craigavon, received the delegates and their friends at a garden party held at Hillsborough Castle, the state residence of the Duke of Abercorn, Governor of Northern Ireland. All this points to the fact that the motor trade is recognized to have won its spurs as a strong and stable organization and can confidently anticipate the time when the persecution of motorbus drivers and owners, at present so rampant in Belfast, shall have been exchanged for a policy more in harmony with the attitude of the Government itself.
A Piquant Development.
The Belfast tramway management's proposal that the corporation should seek Parliamentary powers to run municipal motorbuses through an area of a 20-mile radius outside the boundary of Belfast appears to have stirred up a nest of rural-council hornets. For example, the Antrim Rural Council protests most strongly against any attempt to relieve the rates of Eelfast at the expense of the agricultural community, who would be put to great expense by any such exploitation of the rural roads.
"Aiding and Abetting."
The first case in which this Oastie term has been extended so as to include the publication of a bus timetable has been decided against a prosecuted bus owner, but is to be made the subject of an appeal. A bms driver having been fined for having exceeded the speed limit, his employer was then prosecuted on the charge of aiding and abetting by issuimg a time-table which compelled the driver to exceed the speed limit, the prosecution urging that in the given case the driver, in order to ply up to the time-table, was 'compelled to drive at the appalling speed of 21 m.p.h.—one whole mile above the limit ! For the defence it was urged that in any other kind of case the offence alleged would only make the person accused an accessory before the fact, and not guilty of "aiding and abetting." It was also urged dint the times entered in the table were approximate and were not binding.. The public demands that modern modes of transport shall not be strangled in Ulster with legal red-tape manufactured by the railway companies.