TANGLED STATUTES. They want Straightening Out.

Free Lance, Volume IV, Issue 211, 16 July 1904, Page 6

TANGLED STATUTES. They want Straightening Out.

THE lawyer who wilfully and deliberately gets on his feet m the House to scathe the law that puts money m his pocket is an example of singleness of soul who should have a seat m the House of Representatives until his usefulness is impaired. After that he could be drafted into the Legislative Council as a reward. Mr. Thomas Wilford has stated that a great many of the statutes now existing are m a state of chaos, that they don't express what was intended, and that, instead of making any new laws, the old, familiar ones, through which the usual "coach and horses ' can be driven, should be neatly patched, and made reasonably intelligible * * •* Whether Mr. Wilford got this idea from the Lance we don't know, but on various occasions we have penned some expressions of wonder that the bulk of the statutes should be ever increasing while those existing were maivels of contradictions, the interpretation of which was impossible by even a "Philadelphia lawyer." Every judge and stipendiary magistrate m New Zealand has, at some time or or other, mopped his fevered brow, and asked an Act what it really did mean The judges have, m many cases, to guess at the meaning of the Legislature, which is probably bad fci litigants and annoying to the guessers \ * •+ It isn't often a lawyer growls at the complication of a law, seeing that the "pickings" m involved cases are generally considerable, but when a lawyer deliberately quarrels with his bread and butter by averring that the law is m a tangle that ought to* be unravelled — it is m a tangle For its size and population, New Zealand has more laws worse manufactured than any country m the Empire We are always taking from or adding to the existing laws, and it seems to be a waste of time and good money. * * * Why not devote a session to the interpretation and simplification of the statutes'? Why not, in fact, make law understandable not only to the wigged judge, but to the average citizen ? Seems to us the New Zealand way is to make a law — anything will do — and "try it on the dog." If the dog taJkes kindly to it, jrt it go; if not, bring it back, and put a patch on it this session, a tack m it next session, and saw a bit off it some other time. Why not turn out a complete article m a workmanlike manner ? Laws that Tom Wilford could approve of, and laws which were built to last without alteration ?