MR. BARTON AND THE JUDGES.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5118, 18 August 1877, Page 2

MR. BARTON AND THE JUDGES.

TO THE EDITOR OP THE NEW ZEALAND TISIES. SIE, —Permit me, through your columns, to say that I do not understand what Mr. Barton means by the statement in his letter of the 16th instant, that I complained of being persecuted and ill-treated by the Judges of the Supreme Court. I never did anything of the kind, and am not conscious of ever having been persecuted or ill-treated by them. It is not as a member of the Assembly, but as a private individual, that I look upon Mr. Barton's conduct as an outrage upon society, the best interests of which are concerned in the maintenance of respect for our judicial institutions. It struck me as being strange that in the teeth of his expressed opinions as to the Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Richmond, he should, immediately after the address made to the Bench on Wednesday last, have appeared and argued a case before them. Had I entertained opinions respecting those gentlemen such as Mr. Barton has expressed, I should have tra: sfarrsd my brief to some person who had mr>re confidence in their integrity.—l am, &c., Wm. Thos. Locke Travers. Wellington, August 17. [Mr. Travers made it a special request that this letter should appear. We have inserted it, though doing so is contrary to our rule of not giving publicity to letters referring to communications which have appeared in a contemporary. As, however, the contemporary in which Mr. Barton's letter appeared is conscious of no rule in this respect, perhaps it Js not fair to aoply to it the customs which generally govern journalism.—Ed. N.Z. Times.}