THE GLOBE. WEDNESDAY, JULY 2, 1879.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1674, 2 July 1879, Page 2

THE GLOBE. WEDNESDAY, JULY 2, 1879.

Among tho social reforms which, it is to he trusted, will engage tho attention of Parliament during the coming session, wo hope will he reckoned the reform of tho Courts of inferior jurisdiction. Tho status of these Courts does not, perhaps, touch tho general public so closely as do tho qualifications of the gentlemen who preside in them, hut, nevertheless, attention has only to he drawn to the extraordinary state of muddle existing with regard to these Courts, to show the imminent need of reform. For instance, the same Courts in different parts of the colony perform very different functions. One Resident Magistrate can hear cases up to a certain amount, another can deal with them up to double that sum, while a third has jurisdiction in cases reaching treble the value of those under No. 1. Supposing, too, a Magistrate holds two Courts; he can sometimes dispose of a case for £IOO in one of them, and in the next ho finds his jurisdiction confined to £SO. It is to be presumed that, by some legal fiction, his brains and knowledge have shrunk into half their former capacity when he passed out of the four walls of tho first Court house into those of the second. District Courts aro much in tho same plight as Magistrate’s Courts. One District Court has civil jurisdiction up to, say, £2OO, and a certain amount of criminal jurisdiction into the bargain, another District Court is confined to cases of £IOO and has no criminal jurisdiction whatsoever. Then there aro numberless other Courts that have sprung up like mushrooms at the sweet will of our legislators, Revisal, Assessment Courts, &c., Ac., and all those Courts are floating like atoms on the judicial sea, bound together by no system and regulated by no principles of sound economy- It would certainly be difficult to find another community in which a similar want of system in matters judicial prevailed. Travellers, who have studied the manners and customs of distant people might perhaps he able to point to a nation where a man’s capacity was gauged at so much in one building and at double the amount in another building, or where Courts nominally u,„. status were in reality on totally different footings. Hut the ordinary, untravelled Individual is struck aghast at the anomaly and can only sigh for the day when a different state of affairs will prevail. In the state of affairs above alluded to the present Government aro not, of course, specially to blame, for no previous Government had, in anyway, successfully grappled with tho subject. But there is one point on which, we trust, that the pro- ’ sent Government will be called to account. One ef the great reforms promised us by the Premier and his colleagues was that connected with the personnel of tho Magisterial Bench. For the future, wo wore informed, none hut gentlemen of tho legal profession, possessed of high attainments, wore to occupy tho various Resident Magistrateships. Tho system that had hitherto obtained was pointed at with scorn, and a now state of affairs was to dawn on an astonished public. But the Government have pursued ia this matter exactly the samo “ policy of rest ” which it has pleased them (o pursue in Native affairs. Take the case of tho appointment of Mr. Beswick to tho Resident Magistrateship of Lyttelton. Wo aro totally unacquainted with tho amount of legal knowledge possessed by that gentleman, and we do not, in any way, wish to suggest that his appointment is one whit worse than numbers of others that have lately been made. Wo merely point to tho case of Lyttelton as one with which most of our readers are acquainted. Mr. Beswick may, and wo trust will, in every way prove himself capable of discharging the duties that ho has undertaken, but ho is not and has never boon a member of the legal profession, and has not apparently been chosen for any high legal attainments that have been disclosed in tho discharge of other business. In this ease and in numerous other cases the Government has failed to carry out its promise that a reform in tho matter of our Magistrates’ Courts was to be effected, lu this, as in other matters, tho only “progress” effected by Sir George Grey was bis “ stumping progress ” through tho provinces.