New Zealand Times. MONDAY, MARCH 8, 1575.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4357, 8 March 1875, Page 2

New Zealand Times. MONDAY, MARCH 8, 1575.

The New Zealand Gazette, of the sth instant, contains further Orders in Council, settling the judicial districts of the Supremo Court. The Northern district is assigned to Mr. Justice Gillies; the Canterbury district i 3 given to Mr." Justice Johnston; and the Otago and Southland district to Judge Williams. The Chief Justice will of course preside at the Seat of Government. Thus, it will be observed that the difficulty regarding Mr. Justice Richmond's successor has been overcome without making any new appointment, Nelson coming within the jurisdiction of Judge Gillies, and Westland within that of Judge Johnston. As is well known, the claims of District Judge Ward were such that they could not be overlooked ; but the Government apparently hit upon the device of increasing the work of two Judges to avoid again appointing that gentleman to the Supremo Court Bench, or of putting a slight upon him by taking a barrister out of the rank and file of the profession, and seating him temporarily in Judge Richmond's chair. That, we say, is our interpretation of the Gazette notifications of the 4th and sth instant.

Now, this is one of those questions which should be considered altogether apart from politics. And in what we have to say on the subject of recent judicial changes we shall not be influenced in the slightest degree by political considerations. Our duty in this matter is to the Country, and not to Party. Nor do we now in any way impugn the wisdom of the choice the Government has made, although we frankly admit that in one case at least it is open to serious objection. We take it, however, that Ministers wore actuated by the purest motives in making these judicial appointments. The error, if error there be, was one of judgment, and it may therefore pass without further comment; but we think the Government is wholly without excuse in assigning the judicial districts as has been done. If there was one thing more than another upon which public opinion had declared emphatically, it was against continuing the old system, which gives us—not one Supreme Court, but several Supreme Courts, in each of which a Judge is invested with absolute power. Manifold evils grew up under this system ; —evils of which the public are well aware, and of which the Government cannot have been ignorant. So strong was the consciousness of this feeling indeed, that a joint committee of both Houses, last session, recommended interchanging circuits of the Supreme Court Judges as a means, shall we say, of restoring confidence in the administration of justice, or as a precautionary measure, to prevent suspicion arising in the public mind regarding the strict impartiality of the Judges. We adopt the latter as the true motive ; but whatever may have been the motive, of the practical wisdom of the recommendation there cannot be a doubt. New Zealand is the only British country in which the justiciary are placed in such an anomalous position, and one so unpleasant to gentlemen of a high sense of personal honor and conscientious integrity. They are practically irresponsible. There is no chojk upon them. They are not brought into daily contact with an educated and independent Bar, nor have they the benefit of the experience and advice of their brother Judges to guide them in difficult cases. They must act entirely upon their own judgment; and that judgment is not infallible. Judges are liable to err like other men. They have their likea and dislikes on the Bench just as they had at tho Bar. It is therefore unfair to the Judges themselves to place them in circumstances of such strong temptation. The Government had an opportunity of placing the justiciary on a pedestal on which it would have been impossible for the breath of suspicion to reach them ; but that opportunity has been lost. At all events, the only thing that has been done is to change the men. The system, however, is what was objected to ; and it remains to be seen whether the new Judges are any improvement upon tho old. For ourselves, we very much doubt it. However, that is entirely beside the question now. What wo do protest against, and what the public will protest against also, is the conservation of a system which strikes at the very foundation of justice. The colony requires a change of this system. Unquestioning confidence in the strict impartiality of the Judges cannot possibly exist under present arrangements. What the countrywants is to place the Judges above the breath of suspicion ; to make of them what a great English jurist said was tho the glory of the English justiciary—that they were Judges of Courts and not Judges of Chambers: But who can say, with a knowledge of the Supreme Court rules and practice, that our justiciary are Judges of Courts and not Judges of Chambers. Hence tho absolute necessity of concentrating the Supreme Court in one place, and requiring the Judges to go circuit periodically.. We fear the Government has not given this most important question full consideration. If attention had been paid to the plain indication of the public mind regarding it, advantage would have been taken of the recent changes of the personnel of the Supreme Court Bench to carry out the much-required reform to which we have pointed. But the opportunity has been lost; and already, from the two extremes of the colony, we hear protests, strong as they are unanswerable, against what has been done. The impartial, speedy, and economical administration of justice should be sought after. These aro not always attained under the existing system. Oh the contrary, litigation has been encouraged, suits havebeen unreasonably protracted by the granting of now trials on every imaginable point or pretence of law that could bo urged by astute practitioners having "the car of the " Court," tho consequence often being to delay justice, or dony it to those who could not pursue its costly windings to tho Appeal Court. We regret that these remarks are necessary ; but we should altogether fail in our duty to the public did we not, without delay, protest against the neglect of the Government in not completing that judicial reform so urgently needed. The _ question is one which will daily assumo .larger, proportions, because the sense of delicacy which restrained' a full and scathing exposure of the faults of the judicial system, "during the incumbency of the old Judges, will not operate as a deterrent in the case of the more recent appointments. The new Judges aro called upon to exorcise absolute judicial power under circumstances totally different from thoso which existed when tho present judicial districts were created. It is no longer nocessary to localiso the Supremo Court. . Steamboats

and the telegraph have so far consolidated the colony, ttiat there would be infinitely less inconvenience felt by the ipublic if r the Supreme Court were concentrated at Wellington, tlian there was;-ug; 'to.within-'the last sixty/years, by having the Supreme Courts of the three kingdoms—one at Westminster, one at Dublin, and one at Edinburgh. If it had then been proposed to Great Britain and Ireland into judicial districts, and appoint a permanent Judge to each district, the people would have risen like one man against such a palpable infraction of their civil rights. In fact, such a proposal would have been opposed to the principle on which the" supreme courts of judicature were constituted. And why should New Zealand be an exception to the general rule ? Are its lawyers, from whose ranks the Supreme Court Judges are' drawn, so very much superior, in their moral qualities and intellectual attainments, to the English, Irish, and Scottish Bars, not to speak of the Bars of other British colonies, that they may be placed in circumstances of direct and ever-present temptation, from which public policy requires British, and other colonial Judges, to be exempt 1 Is the legal training and experience of these gentlemen so superior to anything that can possibly be found in the mother country, or the other colonies, that they may individually be entrusted to decide causes which elsewhere tax the ability of the whole judicial Bench 1 The proposition only requires to be stated to be instantly scouted. There is no Bar in New Zealand from which to choose Judges ; there is no great intellectual and social centre in which the legal minds of the colony can be thoroughly traiued ; there is a lamentable want of culture in the profession, one of the many, but by no means the least, of the evils caused by the oxisting partative judicial system ; and yet, with everything against us, we stereotype machinery , repugnant to the genius of the British Constitution, and repellant to the instincts of eternal justice implanted in the breast of every human creature. We care not what Government is in office ; we care not who is responsible for the mistake that has been committed ; —publiepolicyrp.quiresth.it it should be rectified. The profession will hot protest, because it dare not. The struggle—a- mean and ignoble struggle—doubtless will be to conciliate the new Judges ; —to "get the ear of the Court," and so —to pervert justice. No :we do not go that length ; but to give reasonable cause for supposing that justice may be perverted. Such a state of things should not be. The Government can prevent it. We ask the Government to do its duty in the matter.