THE Marlborough Express. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1869.

Marlborough Express, Volume IV, Issue 205, 27 November 1869, Page 3

THE Marlborough Express.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1869.

“ Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to rrgue freely according to conscience, above all other liberties.’ —Milton.

It is a very common-place saying, that “ things in the Colonies ai*e upside down,” and we are bound to confess that there are some strangely anomalous facts in the social and political condition of New Zealand. Our Constitution is professedly liberal ; our franchise very comprehensive ; yet we find the laws, framed by our comparatively infant Legislature, most decidedly old-fashioned—we might almost say retrogressive. As evidence of the truth of this opinion, we have only to point to our Postal and Telegraphic regulations ; to our Tai’iff; and though last, not least, to the administration of Justice. In no part of the British Dominions is the proverbial costliness of the law more consistently sustained. In the Mother Country the tendency of all legislation, for some

years past, has been directed to facilitate the approaches to the throne of Justice ; while in New Zealand, on the contrary, the system of heavy charges has been, and is still, so cruelly oppressive that we can find no milder name for it than legalised extortion. This is especially the case with reference to the recovery of small debts. If a poor man is compelled to sue another —say perhaps for the hard-earned wages of his toil—the first step will cost some seven or eight shillings, and should the case be professionally defended, he may be run into enormous expenses by his richer, and pei’haps more cunning adversary, and after all lose his case and the expenses to boot. At Hokitika recently a case came before the court where all that was requisite was to record a judgment by consent in accordance with an arbitration agreed upon between the parties, and without the fee to the arbitrators, the costs were run up to £ll on a claim of £BB ! In another case, in the same court, a party enquired of the "bench whether he was bound to supply a duty-stamp to the Clerk of the Court when receiving monies out of court, whereupon] he was first mulcted of some shillings before] he was answered, which was in the affirj mative ! How different is the New Zeal land practice to that of the County Courts in England. There the first step costs lOd.l for 205., and the whole of the costs but or 4s. ; and what is more, a Countv Court Judge is not required to record all the evidence, so that he is able to get through perhaps 200 cases in the day—a great saving of time to all concerned. The oppressive system to which we have alluded .above, seems almost peculiar to this Colony, for a dlhrtemporary tells us that “ in Melbourne the summary recovery of small debts by means of the Police Court is rendered so easy in respect to the charges, that a claimant can obtain a decision at a cost within the means of the poorest. The only charge made is 2s. 6d. for a summons, if served by the plaintiff, and nothing whatever afterwards, for hearing,'"adjournment, or any of those other devices b}r which the New Zealand Treasury is enriched, and individuals are impoverished. Englishmen are long-suffering, and slow to move in ridding themselves of a grievance, but we should have thought that in a matter like this, where the pocket is affected, some stir would have been made ere this to throw off so oppressive a burden as are the Court charges in the Resident Magistrates' Courts, the aggregate sum received for which, during the year 1868, amounted to the enormous sum of £23,947 !