MAYOR’S COURT.

Evening Star, Issue 3148, 22 March 1873, Page 2

MAYOR’S COURT.

To the Editor.

Sir, —I am exceedingly amazed and astonished at the opinions which have been propounded in your columns on the subject of the Mayor’s Court. If there is one thing more than another which the citizens ought to resent, it is the abolition of this Court; snd one of the last arguments which ought to be brought to bear upon the question, is the anjumentuni ad pef uniam, ][ hpkl that, even if the maintenance of the Court Involves a pecuniary loss (which is by no means admitted) the citizens would gain indirectly far more than they would lose. Those who recollect the days of the old Town Board, will remember that one of the most cogent reaspns in fpvor of its abolition, and the substitution ip its place of a new order of things was —that the best men would be induced to go in for municipal honours—that the office of Mayor would be a distinction which would be eagerly coveted by our leading citizens. I have reason to know that this was the idea whfch inljuenced the Legislature in providing that Mayors shall be px officiq Magistrates, and which induced the Government of the day to establish a Mayor's Court in Dunedin. | cannot but regard it as suicidal and retrogressive in the extreme, on the part of the citizens of Dunedin, if they are content to relinquish a privilege which, to my knowledge, it cost no small effort to secure, simply for the sake of enabling men to occupy the civic chair, who either cannot spare time to attend to the magisterial functions of said chair, whoso position and acquirements are not up to the mark.

It appears to me, that if the Mayor is de* prived of his judicial functions, the dignity of the office will be most materially curtailed, and ono of the greatest incitements to the election of none but the best and most suitable men removed. Another reason for the continuance of the Court is, that it is one of the few Courts in the Colony in which the great unpaid take any part. To my mind, it is very much to be regretted, that more of th* judicial business of the country is not performed by the unpaid Justices of the Peace. Were it otherwise, 1 am persuaded that a very great pecuniary saving might be effected, and justico would be quite as well administered as by a stipendiary magistrate. Be this as it may, 1 repeat, that the citizens of Dunedin will perpetrate a grand blunder if they dp anything which is calculated to reduce the status of the Mayor. As it is, the tendencies are altogether too muck in this direction. You may depend upon it, that there is no better way of preserving the Municipality from degeneration —no netter way or u^npidiog

its character and respectability, than by en* trusting the Mayor, for the time being, with judicial functions, and taking due care that he is a man duly qualified to exercise such functions with impartiality and dignity, and who will do credit to the citizens, of whom he is the creation. Backwoodsman.