OUR JUSTICES OF THE PEACE.

Evening Star, Issue 4205, 18 August 1876, Page 4

OUR JUSTICES OF THE PEACE.

To the Editr.r. Str, —The old adage, “ familiai’ity breeds •entempt,” like a great many other wellworn. sayings, still retains a little of its original significance ; and, when I read the other day that s ime unfortunate litigant objected in rather plain terms to one of the presiding Justices sitting cn his case, inasmuch aa that gentleman was “no friend of Mb,” it struck me that some screw must be loose when the Bench is brought into such close connection with the grateful recipients o£ Justices’ justice. We have a sufficient number of J.P’s. in Dunedin to form a quorum around every lamp post in the City at one and the same time, and though we are essentially an orderloving people, this is crowding it rather high. In a small community such as ours, it is scarcely wise to set apart one-half of the population, and constitute them judges over the remainder. In such an indiscriminate selection many] injudicious appointments must be, and no doubt are made. Imagine the feelings of some repentant soul, commg up fevered and shaky in the morning, and finding the very man who sold him that particular last bottle of whisky, or who handed him that all too potent tot of Hennessy, sitting in judgment upon him, with a ten-shillings-or-forty-eight-hours’ sort of expression on his face. What we want, and what we eventually must have, is a Stipendiary Police Magistrate—a man who knows his work, and will speedily and properly administer justice to all and sundry. Surely it would be wiser policy to pay such a man • salary than to create J.P.’s in the reckless manner in which they are called into being At present.—Yours, &c., U. P. Dunedin, August 15,