and not in good faith, but if it be such a petition that a legislative body would receive it, and the subject would have the right to present it, it is protected.

Mr. FRASER.-The libel would still be published, and you would protect the person even if it were not received, for if it were a very libellous petition, the House would not allow it to be read, but there would be publication as certain parties would see it, yet the party making the libel would be protected by this section.

Sir JOHN THOMPSON.-No that would be a libel and punishable as such. All that would be necessary would be to allege that it was published to somebody else. As it was not received by the legislative body, no harm was done by attempting to publish it there, but if any body else saw the contents there would be publication.

Mr. FRASER.-Therefore if a petition is sent to myself containing a libel upon another member, it would not be considered a libel, and the party would be protected under this section, even though Í saw it.

Sir JOHN THOMPSON. -The Hon. Gentleman himself would not be guilty of publishing the libel by presenting the petition to the House, and that is a necessary protection.

Mr. FRASER.-Would the party who put the libel in the petition be protected?

Sir JOHN THOMPSON.-No, because it would be a question of publication; and it merely says no one commits the offence by publishing to the Senate or the House of Commons. The same clause is in the English Bill in relation to either House of Parliament: "Defamatory matter contained in a petition to either House or published by order or under the authority of the House."

On section 294.

Mr. LAURIER.-This clause goes very far, in giving power to any party who thinks he suffers a private wrong to bring it before the public if he thinks he will thereby obtain a remedy which the offending party would then be disposed to give him. If a man owes a debt and is not willing to pay, the creditor may think that by adopting this means he can force payment. I do not think this should be encouraged.

Sir JOHN THOMPSON.-That is quite true as far as the general law of libel is concerned, but we are dealing only with the crime of libel. If a man neglects his private duties, such as the duty of supporting his family, and is critisised severely by the press for that, he has his civil remedy, but he cannot bring the journalist to the bar of Justice as a criminal.

Mr. LAURIER.-If a wife has a husband who will not support her, by this she can expose her domestic troubles before the public. Surely the hon. gentleman does not believe that the public morals will be advanced in that way.

Sir JOHN THOMPSON.-The hon. gentleman forgets the qualification that the person has a civil remedy and also that there is a provision:

"If the defamatory matter is believed by him to be true, and is relevant to the remedy or redress sought, and such publishing does not in manner or extent exceed what is reasonably sufficient for the occasion."

Mr. LAURIER.-The great objection I see is that this empowers anybody who, rightly or wrongly, has a grievance of a private nature against another to bring it before the public with impunity.

Mr. FRASER.-Will not the passage of this go far to make it impossible to succeed in the civil action?

Sir JOHN THOMPSON.-We have no jurisdiction in regard to the civil action.

Mr. FRASER.-But the very statement will have great effect with a Jury.

Sir JOHN THOMPSON.-It is the common law now.

On section 322

Mr. FLINT.—The stealing of any chattel by a tenant from a landlord should be no more serious than stealing from any other person.

Sir JOHN THOMPSON.-Make the penalty four years instead of seven.

Mr. FRASER.-By what rule do you make the stealing of $25 worth of property twice as bad as the stealing of $24 worth?

Mr MASSON.-It must be borne in mind that this is the same class of case as where the property of a person is put into possession of another for his use and to be returned. The tenant is in the same position as a trustee. He is let into possession of the landlord's property, and for that reason we have to deal with it separately. A banker, or accountant, or agent is dealt within the same way. This shows that the taking of small things must be treated differently from the taking of things of a higher value than $25.

On section 328.

Mr. MILLS (Bothwell).-It is a pretty severe punishment for some of the offences mentioned here to imprison one in the penitentiary for five years for the stealing of a newspaper.

Sir JOHN THOMPSON.-It is for stealing a newspaper from the mail, and the mails have to be kept sacred by very severe penalties.

Mr. MILLS (Bothwell).-From the mail, I suppose, means from the post office itself.

Sir JOHN THOMPSON.-Yes, everything after it once reaches the post office. These offences are very hard to detect. They are

committed very frequently by persons who occupy good positions in society, who have friends and influence, and if we allow magistrates or Judges to let them off leniently, we shall have very light sentences imposed. Although a good many of these sentences are reviewed, they are only reduced in cases where there is reason to suppose the offence is the first. But generally these offences have only been detected after a long course of crime; and although the punishment is so severe, the unfortunate fact remains that in the penitentiaries of the country there are many persons who formerly occupied good positions in society, who were convicted of stealing from the mails.

On section 332.

Mr. DICKEY.-I would like to ask the Minister of Justice if he has considered the advisability of striking out the words, " over and above the value of the animal, as part of the punishment?"

Sir JOHN THOMPSON.-I have not personally.

Mr. DICKEY.-I raised the question in the committee. It seems to me that the magistrate or other tribunal who tries the criminal charge is not the proper tribunal to settle the value of the animal, and it is difficult to know what effect it will have on the civil action, A man might be fined $10. and also $50 as the value of the dog stolen by him, and the owner of the dog might value it at $200 and sue for that value in a civil court. I suppose this means that the magistrate shall include the value of the animal in the fine. It seems a very unsatisfactory method of punishing.

Sir JOHN THOMPSON.-I presume there can be no doubt that this provision does not affect the civil remedy. It is altogether a fine; but the object is to have the fine something over the value of the animal, otherwise the person stealing it might make a profit by paying the fine and keeping the animal.

Mr. MILLS (Bothwell).-Suppose the magistrate were to value the animal at $20, and the owner brought a civil action and were awarded $50, would the magistrate be compelled to modify his judgment?

Sir JOHN THOMPSON.-No, there is no review. Of course, for stealing other things the punishment is nearly always imprisonment; but we make the stealing of a dog, bird, beast or other animal punishable by a fine or a month's imprisonment, and therefore we must be careful to see that the fine is something more than the value of the thing taken; and, generally speaking, in my experience, the magistrate plies a nominal value, which he arrives at in a very summary way in order to comply with the provision of the law.

Mr. DICKEY.-I have never had occasion to deal with this provision, but I know that in actions for malicious injury to property under the Summary Convictions Act, the valuation of the damages generally makes it very difficult to get a conviction at all.

Mr. FRASER.-And sometimes before a Superior Court there may be evidence of an article being very valuable, and it is quite fair to

make a man pay a fine, and also the value found by the Justice, when he is liable to a subsequent action at civil law, for the real value of the animal. Why not give the justice a greater margin to impose a fine without reference to the value, and leave that to be found by the civil remedy?

On section 333,

Mr. MILLS (Bothwell).-When does a person unlawfully kill a pigeon?

Sir JOHN THOMPSON.-Taking pigeons will be a theft so long as they are in a dove-cot or on their owner's land, but if they are stolen elsewhere, as, for instance, on the highway or on another person's land, they are taken under circumstances which do not amount to theft. This would not refer to pigeon shooting, because that would not be unlawful killing, as the person who gets up the match provides the pigeons and allows them to be killed.

On section 337.

Mr. MILLS (Bothwell).-I think in these sections, 335 to 337, the punishment is altogether out of proportion to the offence. I would not put in the power of a Judge, who may not have much feeling, to send a boy up for seven years for injury done to a tree in the park. In ninety-nine cases out of one hundred, punishment for three months is more likely to be effective.

Sir JOHN THOMPSON.—I have no objection to reduce that and make it five years.

Mr. MILLS (Bothwell).-That is too high.

There may be boys, who have been drinking, who will undertake to dare each other to commit depredations-pull out a shrub or something of that sort. It might never happen again; it possesses no criminal characteristics at all; yet if they fall into the hands of a severe Magistrate, you put it in his power to punish them.

Sir JOHN THOMPSON.-It is for the third offence.

Mr. MILLS (Bothwell).-The punishment in these cases is out of all proportion to the character of the offence.

On section 338.

Mr. O'BRIEN.—I think that is a very severe clause. Where I live. saw-logs are constantly drifting on the lake; no one looks after them, and yet if any one picked one of them up, though it might have been floating for three years, he would be liable to seven years in the penitentiary.

Mr. CHARLTON.-Very often on the lakes the rafts break up, and there is a class of men who pilfer the logs, and hide them in the woods or take them to saw mills, and the owners find this very hard. These logs are very valuable. A mast is sometimes worth $100 or more, and it is very difficult to guard these pieces of timber.

This is substantially the same provision that we have had, and I do not think it is too severe.

Mr. MILLS (Bothwell).-Very frequently, along the shores of Lake Erie, rafts go to pieces, and no one thinks of looking up the logs. It would not pay the proprietor to do so. If he finds that a number have gone ashore at some particular point, he may try to sell them to the farmer on whose land they have gone, but otherwise they may lie there until some fisherman is obliged to pile them up and burn them so as to clear his own front and to clear his fishing ground, because these parties would not pay him for the injury he may have sustained. It might be well to protect them for a time, but are they to be protected for four or five years on the front of a man's property, and he to be liable to the penitenfiary if he logs them up and burns them out of the way?

Mr. SPEAKER.-Formerly there were a number of small mills along the Ottawa river whose owners made it a business to pick up a sufficient number of logs to supply their mills, and, if they were found in their booms, they set up the pretence that they had floated in there and had come to their possession innocently. This had become such a nuisance and prevailed to such an extent that there seemed to be no way of remedying the evil other than to make the possession of these logs punishable in this way, and, in 1875, as I think my hon. friend from Bothwell (Mr. Mills) will remember, the possession of these logs in the booms was made a criminal offence, the onus of proof being thrown upon the party in whose possession they were, instead of lying upon the party who owned the logs, as it did previously, as to the unlawful manner in which they had come into the possession of the party with whom they were found. While, perhaps, the penalty is a little too severe, I think there should be some penalty.

Sir JOHN THOMPSON.-Suppose we make it three years.

On section 365.

Sir RICHARD CARTWRIGHT.-The scope of this section is wide, and the temper of the Judges varies enormously in dealing with this particular class of offences. It appears to me that seven years' imprisonment is a very severe punishment to attach to the issuing of a highly-coloured prospectus, although I am very far from approving of the modes and schemes that a great many promoters have had recourse to.

Sir JOHN THOMPSON.-I have no objection to the term being reduced, if it is thought proper; but this has been the law for a good while here.

Mr. MILLS (Bothwell).—I remember the case where Sir Francis Hincks, under the same provision was convicted, but the law was felt to be too severe, and it was believed that he had not been intentionaliy guilty of fraudulent intent to mislead the public, and was never brought up for sentence.