THE UNPAID MAGISTRACY.

Evening Star, Issue 3338, 31 October 1873, Page 3

THE UNPAID MAGISTRACY.

To the Editor. c; [K) _Some very extraordinary decisions, emanating from the local Benches in the sister Colony of Victoria, have served to draw the public attention to a very important question : no less than as to whether such appointments as unpaid-Justices of the . Peace are not more injurious in their operation than productive of public benefit; and L think it behoves us as a community professing advanced views to also consider this question, as of considerable importance to ourselves. We have the character of Justice Shallow drawn by the pen of immortal Shakespeare at a comparatively remote period of our history, and the office seems to have been made the subject of many witty strictures by other writers; and I think that a careful analysis of one year's decisions of half-a-dozen Benches on this side of the world will be quite sullieient to convince any reasonable man that the race of Justice Shallows is by no means extinct; but I argue from a broader ground than that, because a few noodles on the Bench have brought the administration of justice into contempt, the office of a Justice of the Peace is obnoxious. I assert that what its advocates claim for it is not founded on fact, for it is not inexpensive, and the very nature of many such appointments strikes at the very well-being of society itself. We all must know that a large number of those gentlemen who arc wabiod to put the magical letters

at the end of their names have only sought the appointment honoris causa, and abstain practically from any open exercise of the powers pertaining to the office, and that often for very sufficient reasons. This alone would -iocm clearly to show the non-necessity in many cases of such appointments. I have no doubt that I am considerably under the mark when I affirm that not above a certain proportion of the Justices of the Peace in New Zealand assist in any shape in administering justice on their respective benches, and when many of them do condescend to ait, it often is but for the purpose of serving in their official capacity either themselves or their local adherents and constituents. I have myself ■•ecu in a sister Colony, on the all-important licensing day, the unusual appearance of a fully-crowded bench of magistrates, many or whom were notoriously interested themselves in the results of the various applications for publicans’ licenses, transfers, &c. Faces were then seen serenely presiding over the seat of justice, to bo seen again only on the recurrence of another similar day. Possibly something of the same kind might be seen elsewhere than in the Colony I refer to. I think that were an intelligent foreigner, ignorant of our customs or forms of Government, to inquire who were those Judges sitting in our Magistrate’s Courts, ho would naturally be expected to be told that they were citizens like ourselves, but appointed on account of their superior intelligence and learning to act as magistrates or rulers ; whose decisions were arrived at from a careful study of the laws they administered, and who, when so administering justice, stood for the time being in the place of the Crown itself. He would be told that many cases were summarily tried by them involving the liberty of the subject (a phrase so dear to every true Briton), and that from their decisions in many cases no appeal to any higher court was allowed, and that in many other cases the appeal was to all intents and purposes a farce to a poor man on account of its expense; but he would naturally expect that such a thing as a miscarriage of justice would be seldom heard of. In the introduction to the Vinerian lectures given, by Judge Blackstone, better known now by another title, he expatiates earnestly and eloquently on the necessity of anyone professing a liberal education to be to some degree acquainted with the laws by which the liberty of the subject is secured and the rights of the subject vindicated, and treats the office of administrators of the law as one of the highest honor and credit, and one in which one not expert should in no way have the handling ; and he refers to the fact that some acquaintance with the law of the land was even then considered an essential part of a good education. We are becoming alive to the fact that some kind of examination as to fitness by intelligence and information is necessary to qualify for branches of the civil service, and no one can with impunity imperil the life or limb of another without his fitness as doctor or surgeon is properly certified ; but every day we can see the extraordinary spectacle of a comparatively unlearned man professing to decide the law put forward by advocates trained and educated to a knowledge in which the Magistrate himself cannot profess himself to be conversant. The office of a magistrate is a dignified and important one, but so long as the power rests where it does, and as it is, it must necessarily be degraded; so long as the power rests in the members of a Government to reward political adherence, or recognise social position only by conferring the dignity of J.P. as a cheap favor, involving no expense, so long will such appointments exercise an injurious influence on society. Amongst the leading continental nations such a thing as an unpaid and untrained magistrate is, I believe, unknown.—l am, &0., L. Priestly Bowen. Dunedin, October 29.