Taylor J:

The facts and arguments appear sufficiently from the judgment.

The appellant was convicted of the possession of uncustomed goods. The facts, briefly, are that the accused, who is a watch dealer, was stopped at a customs barrier with 646 watches in his car. After a long investigation the customs officers released 456 watches but prosecuted him in respect of the remaining 190, which were separately and differently packed. He was not charged with smuggling. The gist of the matter is this. The preventive men seize a suspected parcel and say :- "Duty has not been paid on this." If the sale records and duty receipts have not been kept systematically, it is virtually impossible to prove this negative proposition. The law, therefore, shifts the onus and requires the accused to prove that the duty has been paid - otherwise any dealer could defeat the revenue by breaking bulk, mixing smuggled with innocent goods, keeping only hazy records of sales and muddling his receipts. That was the position of this accused; probably he could not have been convicted of smuggling; just possibly the duty on these 190 watches had been paid. His offence is that he - a regular dealer in