JUDGE MARTIN'S DISGRACE. Is it a Case of "Moral Illness?"

Free Lance, Volume I, Issue 29, 19 January 1901, Page 6

JUDGE MARTIN'S DISGRACE. Is it a Case of "Moral Illness?"

NO greater or more painful sensation was ever sprung upon the colony than the scandalous episode which has just closed the public career of Mr. Justice Martin. Here was a man who, on the threshold of middle-age, and m the first flush of his matured powers, had attained to one of the most distinguished positions in the State. He had just realised the ambition of a strenuous and laborious life by receiving permanent appointment to the Supreme Court bench. Higher honours still might reasonably be said to await him. He is a much younger man than the Chief Justice, and, in the event of surviving Sir Robert Stout, it is a perfectly natural presumption to suppose Mr. Justice Martin might have attained to that distinction, and been knighted. • * * Yet, just when freshly crowned with his latest laurels, he suddenly plucks all his honours from his head and shocks and startles society to its foundations by ignoring his obligations as husband and father, and deliberately choosing for paramour the wife of his friend and neighbour. And the circumstances, too, are so very peculiar. It would almost seem as if Mr. Justice Martin had made up his mind to perform moral suicide on an elevated stage, before a crowded audience, and with the full blaze of the limelight turned on. He goes to Sydney as a Judge of the Supreme Court of New Zealand, ostensibly to be present at the Commonwealth celebrations. He meets there — by prior arrangement, it is stated — the young wife of a Christchurch merchant, and, in the city wherein is gathered all the most notable men of the colonies, and while the festivities are at their very

height, he ignobly closes his career by adopting Mrs. Simms as his mistress. • • • The affair seems to have been carried out with great deliberation. According to the newspaper narrative, Mrs Simms wrote to her husband telling him of the illicit relations she had entered into with Mr. Martin, and her intention to remain with him in Sydney. On his part, Mr. Martin has sent in his resignation as Judge, and is said to have informed his Christchurch solicitors of the circumstances mentioned above, and announced tnat he does not intend to return to the colony. , ♦ • * Up to this point Mr. Martin's career has Leen brilliant, his reputation stainless, his private character unchallenged. No public man in New Zealand ever made a more rapid rise to lofty position, and so readily and convincingly proved his fitness for it. He was Crown Prosecutor at Christchurch when, through the instrumentality of the Hon. W. P. Reeves, he was appointed Stipendiary Magistrate at Wellington. An abler or more humane magistrate never sat upon the New Zealand bench. When Mr. Warburtonwas made Auditor-General, Mr. Martin was chosen to succeed him as Public Trustee, and in this responsible position he exhibited not only great administrative talent, but also that unflinching independence which ever marked him. • # * Rather more than a year ago he was raised to the dignity of President of the Arbitration Court. The work of the Arbitration Court was in considerable arrear at the time, but Mr. Justice Martin attacked the accumulation of cases with characteristic vigour, and, not only rapidly disposed of them, but won golden opinions from all sorts of people by the skill and address and the transparent fairness with which he unraveled the tangled skein of complex industrial problems, and planned an adjustment which all parties could accept as a modus vivendi. Finally, just before Christmas last, Mr. Martin received permanent appointment as Judge of the Supreme Court. In nine years he had passed through all the grades we have enumerated., • • How can one account for a man of such well-balanced mind, so clear an intellect, and so upright in all his dealings, abandoning home, family, country, and a noble career, in order to gratify a sensual passion for another man's wife ? It is an enigma. Mr. Martin has been twenty years married, his domestic life was understood to be quite happy, he seemed much attached to his wife, and he was proud of his daughter, an amiaoie young lady, nineteen years of age. The Hon. Dr. Grace suggests that it may have been a sudden attack of moral illness. A generous impulse from a charitable heart doubtless prompted that remark. ♦ * * Still, when in ordinary life Bill Jones forgets his own marital vows, and runs off with Jack Smith's wife, people do not hunt round for nice terms like "moral illness" by which to designate his conduct. They have a vulgar habit of denning it in very plain English. The plea of "moral illness" would not avail to screen the thief, the burglar, or the murderer from the consequences of their crimes. And the higher a man's station in life, the riper his intellect and education, and the loftier the trust he holds from his fellowcitizens, the more society expects and demands from him in return. We are sorry for Mr. Martin, but we are afraid the suggestion of sudden moral illness won't go far with sensible people to explain or palliate his conduct. We are sorrier still for Mr. Martin's family, who are the innocent sufferers by his misconduct. * • • There is, however, one thing in this disgraceful business that may be

mentioned in his favour. 2& might have carried on a clandestine intrigue, and held his judicial position while posing before the world as a moral man. There are whited sepulchres in every community. But he is not hypocrite enough for that. He has preferred to make a cjeaii breast of his offence, and hit determination to offend, against the code of morals. Much better that he has done that than that Rumour, with her thousand tongues, should have cause to attach the stigma of moral turpitude to a man duchargjing the highest and gravest functions in the State.