Brown A-G CJ:

These three appeals were heard on the same day, and it will be convenient to deal with them together. In each case the appellant was convicted i inter alia of driving under the influence of drink, contrary to s. 27(1) of the Road Traffic Ordinance, 1941. In each case the appellant was sentenced to three months imprisonment on that charge. Each case had been tried by the same Magistrate and in each case the learned Magistrate had expressed, in his Grounds of Decision, the serious view which he took of this type of offence. In each case I upheld the convictions but the sentences of imprisonment were quashed and fines were substituted.

In the matter of punishment, the "type of offence" is the concern of the Legislature, which has provided the maximum punishment which can be inflicted for a serious offence of that type. The particular offence, and the particular offender, are the concern of the Court, whose business it is to decide what punishment is merited upon the facts of the individual case within the limits which the Legislature has provided. Any tendency to standardise punishment for any type of offence is to be deplored because it means that the individual offender is being punished not upon the facts of his particular case but because he has committed an offence of that type. This tendency is particularly to be resisted in imposing punishment for an offence for which the Legislature has not left a wide field of discretion to the Court. For the offence which I am considering (unlike the offences, for example, of robbery or rape) the Legislature has limited the Court's discretion to a fine of $500 or four months' imprisonment for a first offence.

It is right that I should say that the learned Magistrate, when he tried these three cases, had not had the advantage of seeing the judgments of Taylor J in Magistrate's Appeals No. 225 of 1953 (Lindsay) and No. 176 of 1953 (Perera). In both those cases the appellant was a first offender and had been sentenced to three months imprisonment. In the former case the learned Judge quashed the sentence of imprisonment and substituted the maximum fine. In the latter case he reduced the sentence of imprisonment to one month. In the latter case the evidence of the appellant's condition was that he was too drunk to make a statement at the Police Station and that bail had to be refused because he was incapable of establishing his identity. I respectfully agree with both those decisions. The latter was, in my opinion, a proper case for imprisonment, and it was on account of the appellant's circumstances (age, etc.) that the learned Judge reduced the sentence from three months to one.

I do not propose to set out the facts of the three cases with which I am now dealing. It is sufficient to say that if I had been in the position of the learned Magistrate I should not have considered that the facts of any of these cases justified a prison sentence for a first offender. Moreover the sentence imposed was in each case three-quarters of the maximum for a first offender. But it is conceivable that, except in case No. 229 of 1953, I might only have reduced the prison sentences if I had been satisfied that the learned Magistrate, instead of giving effect to his dislike of a "type of offence" which we must all abhor, had seriously applied his mind to the facts of each case, and in particular had considered (a) the degree of intoxication and therefore the degree of the appellant's incapacity to control his vehicle, and (b) the effect of his sentence, including the disqualification, on the individual he was punishing. In case No. 229 of 1953 I should in any event have substituted a fine for imprisonment, because the medical evidence showed that the appellant was in a "mild" state of intoxication. But shortly, in considering whether a prison sentence should be imposed in the case of a first offender, the facts of the case must be carefully studied and the gravity assessed according