is issued under the section is to be held responsible for any violation of the section of the Act.

It follows that if a defendant is made responsible for infractions committed by other persons, he is so made responsible without any regard to guilty intent or mens rea. The state of his mind does not affect the legal consequence, and it is by necessary implication taken for granted that he may have had no knowledge of the particular infraction.

The question then arises whether this penal responsibility on the part of the owner extends to all infractions in respect of the vehicle or whether it is to be limited to those which the defendant should have prevented or as to which he was in some way in default under the Act. It must be said that there is some reason to be found in support of the argument made on defendant's behalf to the effect that the Legislature could not have intended to fasten this penal responsibility upon the owner of vehicle indiscriminately and without regard to the circumstances in which the owner may happen to have been placed. For instance, if a highway robber were to rob the owner of his vehicle and in running away were to exceed the prescribed maximum speed, can section 1406 apply to make the owner responsible for such an infraction?

Or again, it is pointed out that article 1414 contains an express provision for punishment by fine or imprisonment of any person using, interfering or tampering with any motor vehicle "without the permission of the owner," and it is asked if the owner is responsible for this infraction also, seeing that article 1406 declares that he is responsible for any violation of the Act without distinction. Is he made liable to a penalty for infraction of an enactment made apparently for his own protection?

Moreover, in article 1430 a prohibition to allow a vehicle to stand unattended in any street is directed in express terms against the person by whom the vehicle is "operated." Can the penalty in such a case be said to be incurred by the owner?

If it is to be held that, in such cases as have just been suggested for illustration or in any of them, article 1406 is not applicable and the owner is in consequence not to be held responsible; the question for decision in this case comes to be whether or not the defendant is to be held responsible for the infraction committed by the machinist of the garage to whom the vehicle was entrusted for repairs.

It has been observed in the treatises above quoted from, that cases have arisen in England under the provisions of such Acts as the Public Health Acts, the Licensing Acts, and the Sale of Food Act, in which the Courts have had to consider how far or in what circumstances a defendant is to be held responsible for infractions in the absence of knowledge or immediate participation on his part.

I have accordingly considered it to be appropriate, in arriving at a decision of the present case, to look at some of these decisions, having of course, regard to the varying phraseology of the enactments applicable in each class of cases.

Cases under the Liquor Licensing Acts may be first referred to. In Cundy v. Lecocq (1884), 13 Q.B.D. 207, the offence charged was sale to a drunken person and the Court held that the words of the section amounted to an absolute prohibition of such a sale and that knowledge that a person was drunk was not an element of the offence. This decision was followed in The Queen v. Dias, 1 Can. Cr. Cas. 534, a prosecution under sec. 110 of the New Brunswick Liquor License Act, 1896.

In Sherras v. De Rutzen (1895), 1 Q.B. 918, it was held that an enactment which prohibits a licensed victualler from supplying any liquor to any constable on duty does not make the licensed victualler responsible as for an infraction where the licensed victualler bonâ fide believes at the time that the constable was off duty.

In Comissioners of Police v. Cartman (1896), 1 Q.B. 655, where the offence charged was selling to a drunken person it was proved that the landlord was absent, and his barman, who

28-c.c.c. XVII.

had been left in charge with orders that no drunken person was to be served, knowingly served a drunken man and it was held that the landlord was responsible and ought to be convicted.

In Emary v. Nolloth (1903), 2 K.B. 264, where the Act subjected to penalty "every holder of a license who knowingly sells or delivers to any person under the age of fourteen years; it appeared that intoxicating liquor was sold to a child under fourteen years of age by a servant of a licensed person contrary to the express orders and without the knowledge of the master who was himself in charge of the premises at the time of the sale, and it was held that the licensee could not be convicted of having knowingly allowed the sale. In giving judgment, Lord Alverstone, C.J., said:

"It would serve no useful purpose to go through the decisions which have been cited to us in argument; but these general principles may be gathered from them. If the offence is prohibited in itself, knowledge on the part of the licensee is immaterial; this principle was acted upon quite recently in Brooks v. Mason where intoxicating liquors had been sold in a bottle not in fact sufficiently corked but believed to be so, and the knowledge was held to be inmaterial. Then comes the class of case in which the licensee is charged with knowingly allowing, permitting or suffering an offence to be committed; in those cases knowledge is essential; but it has been held, and this is the second principle to be extracted from the decisions that if the licensee delegated his authority to some one else, delegating as my brother Channell said "his own power to prevent" and the person left in charge commits the offence the licensee is responsible for permitting it; that is a reasonable and logical view to take, and is necessary in order to prevent the Act of Parliament from being defeated.

"Then we have, thirdly, the class of case where, under the circumstances (as in the present case) there has been

no delegation of authority, and the licensee is himself controlling the business and has given direct instructions to the person in his employ that there is to be no infraction of the provisions of the statute."

The complaint was accordingly dismissed.

There have been also decisions in cases under Merchandise Marks Act (1887), of Great Britain. By that Act it is provided that every person is guilty of an offence who applies any false trade description to goods or who causes that to be done unless he proves that he acted without intent to defraud.

In Coppen v. Moore (1898), 2 Q.B. 314, a case which was brought under this Act it was said by Lord Russell, C.J., that

"We conceive the effect of the Act to be to make the master or principal liable criminally (as he is already by law, civilly) for the acts of his agents and servants where the conduct constituting the offence was pursued by such servants and agents within the scope, or in the course of their employment, subject to this, where he can prove that he had acted in good faith, and had done all that was reasonably possible to do to prevent the commission by his agents and servants of offences against the Act."

Then in the Sale of Food and Drugs Acts, there is a somewhat similar provision relieving persons who have acted in good faith.

The Act prohibits amongst other things, the sale of adulterated food or drugs unless the seller proves that he did not know. and could not with reasonable care have discovered the adulteration.

There has been much discussion as to the extent to which guilty knowledge must be proved to establish the commission. of an offence. The result of the decisions would seem to be that guilty knowledge need not be proved, unless the words knowingly, wilfully or the like appear in the section creating the offence. Dyke v. Gower (1892), 1 Q.B. 220.

And where an employer is prosecuted for an offence under

the Acts in respect of a sale by an employee, he is liable to conviction where the act done by the employee and constituting the offence was unauthorized. This conclusion was arrived at in Parker v. Alder (1889). 1 Q.B. 20, which was a milk-adulteration case in which it was admitted that the milk sold by the defendant had been watered by railway servants after he had put it into the railway car. Lord Russell, of Killowen, C.J., in giving judgment said :

"Now, assuming that the respondent was entirely innocent morally, and had no means of protecting himself from the adulteration of this milk in the course of transit, has he committed an offence against the Acts? I think that he has. When the scope and object of these Acts are considered it will appear that were he to be relieved from responsibility, a wide door would be open for evading the beneficial provisions of this legislation. It has been decided in Brown v. Foot in the clearest manner that an innocent vendor of milk is undoubtedly liable for the unauthorized act of his servant in adulterating it. It becomes therefore at once apparent that there is really no material difference between this case and that, because a vendor is no more able to prevent the adulteration by a dishonest servant than he is to prevent adulteration by strangers such as the servants of the railway company. This is one of the class of cases in which the legislation has, in effect, determined that mens rea is not necessary to constitute the offence." There are also cases respecting food-stuffs.

In the Fertilizers and Feeding Stuffs Act (Great Britain) 1893 (56-57 Vict. ch. 56), it is provided that any person who "causes or permits" any invoice or description of the goods sold by him to be false or in any particular is liable to a penalty.

In Laird v. Dobell (1906), 1 K.B. 131, the defendants were shewn to have sold cotton seed meal "guaranteed 58 per cent. oil and albumenoids." They had previously had the meal analysed and an analyst had certified the percentage to be 60.27. The proof shewed the real percentage to have been 51.