Odger's English Common Law

NON-REPAIR OF HIGHWAYS. 251
or at Quarter Sessions. The defendant is a competent
witness, and may be compelled to give evidence for the
prosecution. 1
It "will be a defence to an indictment against
parishioners, if they can show that a particular landowner is
bound to repair that particular highway or portion of a high-
way, or that by custom a particular hundred or township in
the parish is bound to repair it. But such a defence must be
specially pleaded.
It is a misdemeanour for any person, who is bound by law
to repair a bridge, to leave it unrepaired. It is a felony
unlawfully and maliciously to pull or throw down, or in any
way to destroy or do any injury to, any bridge (whether over
a stream or not), viaduct or aqueduct over or under which
a highway, railway or canal passes, with intent to make
such bridge, viaduct, aqueduct, highway, railway or canal
dangerous or impassable. The maximum punishment for
this offence is penal servitude for life. Male offenders under
sixteen may also be whipped. 2 The offence is not triable at
Quarter Sessions. 3
It is equally a misdemeanour wilfully to divert or obstruct
the course of any navigable river so as appreciably to diminish
its convenience for purposes of navigation, even though the
alteration may, upon the whole, be for the convenience of the
public. 4
It will, however, be no crime, if the obstruction be
caused by a vessel which was sunk through an unavoidable
accident. 5 But even in that case it is the duty of the owner,
so long as he retains possession and control of it, to buoy his
vessel or otherwise provide against other vessels striking on
it. 6
Similarly, it is a misdemeanour to allow any obstruction
to navigation to exist in a public harbour. 7
There are also many highway offences triable summarily
before justices :
—
Any person, who works a steani-eugine or other machinery, or sinks a
1 40 & 41 Vict. c. 14, s. 1, which is not repealed by the Criminal Evidence Act, 1898
(61 & 62 Vict. c. 36) ; see s. fi
2 24 & 25 Vict. c. 97, ss. 33, 58, 73 ; 54 & 55 Vict. c. 69, 6. 1.
' 5 & 6 Vict. c. 38, s. 1.
* R. v. Randall (1842), Car. & M. 496 ; R. v. Russell (1854), 23 L. J. M. C. 173.
5 R. v. Watts (1798), 2 Bsp. 675.
6 White v. Crisp (1854), 10 Ex. 318.
1 R. v. Williams (1884), 9 App. Cas. 418.