THE GLOBE. Friday, october 8, 1880. BILLS OF COSTS.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 2067, 8 October 1880, Page 2

THE GLOBE. Friday, october 8, 1880. BILLS OF COSTS.

Me. Teavees is a many-sided man—his experiences have been, and his talents are, varied. Ho has smelt powder in the Spanish Legion, lie is known as an eloquent advocate and as a clever botanist. But he has now taken up a new line, namely, that of a reformer. Should ho be able to make a mark in his last role, he will earn the gratitude of the general public. Generations yet unborn will place the name of Travers alongside men who have deserved well of their country and mankind at largo. To come to the point at once, we will quote the words of Mr. Travers, spoken the other day at a meeting of the Wellington Chamber of Commerce: — “He said that, speaking as a member of the Chamber, it appeared to him that bills of costs required a very large amount of clipping. As a lawyer, he felt himself justified in taking reasonable advantage of the existing state of things, and a good bill of costs presented its attractions to him as forcibly as to any other lawyer; but he had no hesitation in saying that many of these bills were gross in the extreme, and that nothing could be more rascally than the system on which accounts were made out, both against clients and opponents. If the Chamber wished to bring about anything like a sound system of jurisprudence, the question of costs must first be disposed of, for bills of costs, regarded from the standpoint of the general public, were an absolute atrocity.” The outspokenness of these words is remarkable, but they will find an echo among all who have at any time received one of those remarkable documents. The cheerful way in which the barrister half of the lawyer combines with the solicitor half of the same individual to mulct the client, will recur to the memory of the victim, and he will be decidedly inclined to agree with the latter half of Mr. Travers’ oration. Bat to the profession itself it must come as somewhat of a shock that the suggestion should have emanated from one of their own body. The monks were startled when Luther, a monk himself, struck the deepest blow against the monastic orders. The nobles in the time of Louis XIII., were disgusted because Richelieu, a noble himself, exerted himself to the utmost for their overthrow. And so in many other cases the reformer has issued from the ranks of those whom he wished to reform. The lawyers in New Zealand, like the monks and the nobles tinder the old regime, have hitherto had it pretty much their own way. But we do trust that, now one of their own number has sounded the battle cry, some endeavor will be made to place the system on which those charming bills of costa are founded on a sounder footing. The lawyers are made for the public, and not the public for the lawyers. Although the latter state of affairs at present apparently obtains, if the matter were once brought fairly up, a much needed reform might ensue.