The Globe. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1878.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1449, 8 October 1878, Page 2

The Globe. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1878.

The Judicial Commission Bill has boon thrown out of the House of Representatives hy a considerable majority, notwithstanding the fact that Ministers — with the exception of the Hon. Mr, Stout —had taken very great pains to assist its passing. Certainly the question involved in the Bill was not a cardinal one of policy; yet, considering how warmly the Government supported it, and how the Premier especially pleaded with unusual earnestness that the country’s best interests demanded that a measure of the kind be placed upon the Statute Book, the result of the division clearly shows how little weight Ministerial utterances possess at this late period of the session. And it is indeed curious to examine into the variety of arguments which were brought to bear either for or against the Bill by men who had evidently studied the subject deeply and were fully conversant with the importance raised by the issues before them. The At-torney-General, we are told, while strenuously opposing the Bill, did so as a special pleader whose temporary official position, as one of the loaders of the Now Zealand Bar, clothed him with duties of a nature which absolutely cast into the shade those of a Parliamentary representative, lot alone of a Cabinet Minister, who should be expected to lead the House from patriotic convictions purely. We confess that a practice such as the one to ■which we refer, let it be ever so ancient or so powerfully grafted upon the root of Parliamentary tradition, grates very unpleasantly upon modern ears, and that many will bo found to urge that it is high time it should be recognised as obsolete and repugnant to present liberal ideas. This is the reason, however, understood to be explanatory of Mr. Stout’s seeming defection from the side taken by his colleagues upon the remarkable controversy affecting, to a serious degree, the position of the Judges in this colony. And it must be admitted, that speaking against his political convictions, as the Attorney-General is reputed to have done on this occasion, he did ample justice to the popular belief that it is all one to a clever lawyer whether ho is retained on the side of truth or against it. For our part, while recognising that, without a doubt, legal precedents and technical tenets of law give the Judges of our superior courts throughout the British Empire summary powers of an extraordinary elasticity in cases of verbal or written contempt, we cannot see that judicial records have shown that judges ever have abused those privileges which —as far as at all events as the keeping of order in their courts is concerned —it is absolutely necessary they should possess, In New Zealand especially that very elasticity has never been over-stretched in regard to newspaper comments, while in the Australian colonies instances have been witnessed when, with perhaps a great want of tact and dignity, judges have dragged before them newspaper publishers and, recording against them a qiuisi kiun of conviction on view, they have extended to their breaking point these powers of punishing persons guilty of this so-called contempt. One feature of the debate on the Bill must strike the minds of disinterested people who care not for the unfortunate occurrence—the “ martydom ” of Mr G. E, Barton at the hands of the Wellington judges—which originated the whole Parliamentary commotion. Humble in point of numerical population, position, aud so on, an Now

Zealand is, and there being no other yistanco on record in the colony against too great a stretch of judicial power in punishing for contempt than that of Mr Barton, it must seem somewhat singular that Now Zealand should thus attempt to initiate a movement having for its object to clip the protecting wing of the Judges. The Courts of this colony possess to an exactly similar extent all the powers of the English Courts. In fact wheroevor the British tlag rules, these powers exist and they are based upon one common legal dictum. To suddenly discover in Now Zealand that we need legal reform of so important a character as that which is involved in the Bill just thrown out seems to us rather presumptuous. The Courts without a doubt have the power to commit, but at all events it would be a monstrous thing to appoint a Commission in New Zealand to determine what the law of England was on the subject. The Commission in reality would have nothing to inquire into. It stands to common sense and reason that Judges as well as other judicial dignitaries should have the power of protecting themselves and maintaining order in proceedings before them involving the interest of the public at Large. If they made an improper use of it, public opinion would soon make itself heard in no indistinct way. And without the shadow of a doubt the debates which have accompanied the transient passage of the Judicial Commission Bill through the House must prove of immense value in more ways than one. It was scarcely denied by the warmest opponents of the measure even, that the Wellington Judges had perhaps gone a little too far when exercising the operation of the laws of contempt upon Mr. Barton. An expression was emphatically recorded on all sides that there was a lino at which Judges should stop the outcome of their wounded dignity and anger, and we feel quite sure that a lesson has indirectly been given to “ whom it may concern” in the big-judicial world, which cannot fail to bear fruit. The warmth of the arguments and the significance of not a few of the facts which wore elicited during the consideration of the Bill have certainly produced that effect. On the whole the debates on the Bill have been of great utility, if only in ventilating and bringing to the surface points of much importance in regard to judicial privileges which, in many people’s minds, and even in that of the legal profession, were shrouded in obscurity. And furthermore it appears to us that if the “ much injured” Mr. Barton will only look at things with a calm and moderate eye, he will find that he has gained, notwithstanding the defeat of the Bill, all that his case could prompt any sensible man to require.