LAW AND JUSTICE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 26, 22 July 1871, Page 2

LAW AND JUSTICE.

[lndependent, July 17-] We have already closely examined the expenditure in the Customs, Post Office and Telegraph Departments, and for economy and efficiency we have challenged a comparison with the same departments in Great Britain or any of her colonies. As Victoria has been frequently held before our colonists as a model of Government, we have compared the Government expenditure of New Zealand and Victoria together, and we have found that the latter is far more expensively governed. Not only, as we have seen, are the civil servants there paid higher salaries, but they do less work. So far as we have gone, we have not been able to discover a single item that can bear reduction, and as we have thrown down a challenge to all the journals that have repeated the cuckoo cry of Government extravagance, and none have accepted it, we may reasonably conclude that in these departments at least the whole colony acknowledges the efficiency and economy of their administration. It is simply inconceivable that the opposition press, distinguished for so keen a scent for Government abuses, should have remained silent under our challenge for any other reason than that they had nothing in our figures or in our conclusions to take exception to. Even the " Nelson Examiner," that devotes the most of its space to the refutation of the leading articles in our columns (varied by lamentably weak attempts to " put down" the irrepressible " Colonist") has shown a wise discretion. That journal, with its present brilliant staff of writers pouring forth week after week most labored productions, in which spleen, forced wit, and that department of literature chiefly cultivated in the nursery —calling nicknames, do most abound, has an instinctive aversion to facts. Even the great Dr Curl, who wrote the long letter to Mr Stafford which appeared in its columns, inveighing most severely against Government expenditure and advocating the instant dismissal of " many thousand useless officials," has not come forward to name one single official as over-paid or underworked. Nothing shows the absurdity of mere vague and general accusations better than the silence of the accuser when he is brought face to face with facts. Surely, if the country is " overridden with useless officials," the departments already reviewed must cootain some illustrative examples. We call on these apostles of retrenchment, once for all, to come out from behind the ambush of general charges into the open region of facts. Instead of talking about " many thousands of useless officials," let them, in the departments reviewed, name only half-a-dozen. Let them name one!

Resuming our consideration of Government expenditure on the public departments we come to day to that designated " Law and Justice." Here again we have to point out the exacting character of our population, who demand, in anew and sparsely peopled colony, all the conveniences and appliances usually obtainable only in old and wealthy communities. Every town of any size in the colony has its resident magistrate, and the inhabitants enjoy actually more conveniences under this department than those of an older country. Take Scotland for instance, where the department of law and justice is proverbially well administered. Where would you find a Resident Magistrate in a town the size of Wellington ? It is true that if it were the capital of a county it would have a Sheriff, whose functions are nearly the same, but then that officer would hold quarterly courts in three or four towns in the shire, at which all suitors within his jurisdiction, i. e., within the county, would have to attend at a great waste of time and much trouble and expense. A shopkeeper who wishes to recover a debt has either to repair to the county town, say from twenty to forty miles off, where he will have a chance of getting his case heard on a prescribed day each week, or he will have to wait three months till the Sheriff holds a court in or near the town in which he resides. Many towns the size of Wei lington are thus situated, and make no complaint, but, if we had to wait three months here for the arrival of Mr Crawford (say) from the county town of Wanganui, we should hear the most eloquent denunciations of the inadequate provision made for the administration of law and

justice. If, therefore, in this department of law and justice, there are any unnecessary officials (and we are not prepared to say there are none), it is simply because the population enjoy greater facilities than they are entitled to expect in so sparsely-populated a country. If there are districts that might be grouped together under one Eesident Magistrate, with one set of officials under him, then unquestionably a saving should be effected. If, for instance, the Wellington, Hutt and Wairarapa, were put under one Magistrate, with certain court days in each week, there would doubtless be a great saving, but the public would lose facilities they now enjoy. The system of provincial charges has worked well in connection with this department, as, by charging the expenses of its administration against each province, its representatives in the Assembly are virtually responsible for the amount expended. We think retrenchments might be made in this department, but they must emanate from the people themselves. Let Dr Curl, for instance, head a petition at Wanganui, asking for the abolishing of a Resident Magistrate's Court there, with its attendant expanse, and if numerously signed and supported by their representatives, the prayer would at once be granted by the supreme legislature. The Justices of the Peace there might act on stated days each week, and a Magistrate might hold quarterly courts for any cases that might be left over for his decision. Were we but to see such a movement begun in Wanganui by this stern opponent of Government extravagance, it would convince us of his sincerity as a reformer far more than his loud sounding generalities, and his tall talk about "many thousands of useless officials!"

We have gone over every item in the Estimates of this department, and we see no salaries calling for reduction. We think, however, that some magistrates might possibly be dispensed with by grouping districts together ; but it is impossible to lay down any general rule, and the circumstances of each case must alone determine it. We think also that the duties of several offices could be so distributed as to dispense with certain officials whose time is not wholly occupied with their special duties. We are glad to see that the present Government is more alive to the necessity of retrench-* ment in this respect than any Ministry we ever had before. With all the cry against Government extravagance that has been made since last session, we find that in this department alone they have saved, during the present recess, about one thousand pounds a year in this way. Thus, in Dunedin, there has always been a Registrar of Births, Deaths, and Marriages, at a salary of £4OO per annum; but the Colonial Secretary lately made arrangements for having the duty discharged for £IOO per annum by officers of the General Government—thus saving three hundred a year. Similarly, savings have been effected in the Supreme Courts and R. M. Courts throughout the colony during the recess as occasion offered. The followingreductions have, for instance, been made : R. M. Court, Wellington, £7O ; Onehunga, £325; Wanganui, £4O; Nelson, £SO; Picton, £SO; Rangiora, £140; Invercargill, £SO; Supreme Court, Wellington, £25; Westland (providing also for the new office of District Land Registrar),£2oo, &c. So that after providing new district courts at New Plymouth and Timaru, and a new R. M. Court at the rising township of Gisborne, besides adding to the salaries of a few officers whose duties have increased with the growing business of their districts, there has been an actual saving effected during the recess by this "most extravagant" Ministry of about one thousand a year in this department alone ! Compared with the same department in Victoria, this department will show, most favorably. A detailed comparison is neither possible nor desirable, but a few of the Victorian items will suffice to prove our assertion. From the Victorian Estimates, we select the following: Crown Solicitor, £IOOO ; chief clerk for criminal business, £600; chief clerk for civil business, £6OO ; 2 clerks at £485, £970 ; 2 do. at £350, £7OO ; other clerks, £900; messenger, £80; total, Crown Solicitor's office,£4,B4o. Then,again,prothonotary, £BOO ; chief clerk, £606 ; other clerks, &c, £1,685; salaries under the Head

Prothonotary, £3,085. Then, again,under the heading "Law Officers of the Crown," the salaries amount to £7,531 13s 4d. Then, again, the salaries under the heading " Master-in- . Equity" amount to £2,170 ; Commissioner of Lunacy, £7OO ; Chief Commissioner of Insolvent Estates, £2,797. The Commissioner of Titles receives a salary of £2,000, and of the Examiners one receives £BOO, and another £7OO. The expenses under the two heads Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, amounting, in Victoria, to over £165,000, in New Zealand to £42,000. It is impossible not to draw from these items the same inference that we drew when comparing the other public departments of the two colonies, viz., that our civil servants are paid less and worked harder than those of Victoria ; nor does a comparison of the two estimates before us lead us to any other conclusion than that in this, as in the other departments we have closely examined, there is no foundation for the charge of extravagance made against the General Government. We may regret that- the system of cheap land transfer was not adopted when it was proposed by Mr Fox to the New Zealand Company, and that many hundreds of thousands have been uselessly wasted in law by litigation which would have been saved. We may regret that the requirements of the colony should have been so little studied, and the cumbrous and expensive system of English law courts so slavishly reproduced here, when'a simpler and cheaper jurisprudence might have, with advantage, been adopted. We may regret that an Appeal Court, which is a virtual denial of justice to all but very wealthy suitors, has been instituted, and that some such a system as that we advocated in our last issue has not been substituted. We may regret that our resident magistrates should frequently sit upon such cases as breaches of byelaws of the Corporation, more properly disposed of in some parts of the colony by the mayors, and should in other cases be called upon to decide abstruse legal questions, presupposing a knowledge of the law and an acquaintance with precedents which they notoriously do not possess. We may regret that the Supreme Court should be often occupied with cases more properly disposed of by the inferior court; but while we may regret all these defects, , some of them unavoidable in a new country, we must remember they are matters for legislative and not administrative action. The department at present is both efficiently and economically administered, and greater reductions have been made during the recess than during any similar period since representative institutions were granted to the colony.