LAW: ITS PROFITS AND ITS COSTS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 655, 6 November 1874, Page 3

LAW: ITS PROFITS AND ITS COSTS.

Some extreme economists talk, or did talk, of the high salaries paid to judges. Compared with what many of them earn and have earned at the bar, their salaries on the bench are very small. For example, Mr Justice Richmond, in a practice in Dunedin with Mr T. B. Gillies, yielding, it is reported, at the rate of about L7OOO to LBOOO a year between the two partners ; the salary fixed to the judgeship is LISOO, or half what the recipient was receiving as a practising barrister. Nor is it here only that this difference exists. Under the heading “ From the Bench to the Bar ” the Times copies the following paragraph respecting an American judge:—“lt is announced that Chief Justice Dixon, of Wisconsin, who has held the office fifteen years, has resigned his position because the salary, which is 4000 dollars a year, is inadequate. He can do a great deal bettor in the practise of law, and will resume it at Milwaukee.”

There is also something more or less applicable to New Zealand in the paragraph subjoined, taken from a Californian paper, and which we commend to legislators and to all law reformers “ The dearest thing in this country is what ought to be the cheapest—justice. The theory of our law is that any citizen who has been wronged can appeal to the Courts and bo righted, but in practice justice has become so costly and uncertain that no prudent man appeals to the law if he can help it. This is the result of putting the malting and the administration of our laws in the hands of a set of men who get a living out of the costs of justice.” Perhaps the latter quotation will help, in some degree to elucidate the mystery of the first.