JUDICIAL APPOINTMENTS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5150, 25 September 1877, Page 3

JUDICIAL APPOINTMENTS.

TO THE EDITOR 01’ THE NEW ZEALAND TIMES. Sir, —I feel flattered at the notice you have taken of my letter in a sub-leader in your journal of the 18th inat., and trust you will grant me a small space to correct the conclusions you seem to have arrived at (in my opinion erroneously) in one or two particulars. You appear to admit the general principle that lawyers are the proper persons from whom Resident Magistrates ought to be chosen; but at the same time you doubt if any but “ the waifs and strays of the law” could be found to accept the appointment in the large towns. Now I venture to affirm that there are at least a dozen really competent lawyers who have always held their own in the courts of the colony, and who are moreover shrewd, sensible men of the world, who have acquired a moderate independence, and who would gladly exchange the wear and tear of a barrister and solicitor’s life for the more tranquil one of Resident Magistrate or District Judge. Now with regard to the Clerks of the Bench I must entirely disagree with yon that they are entitled to look forward to elevation to the Bench. If you admit it right in principle to appoint lawyers (at any rate in centres of population) then a Clerk of the Bench must know that when he has reached a certain point he cannot go further. I admit to its fullest extent promotion according to merit in the Civil Service, but I do not admit that any jack-of-all-trades is a fit and proper person to sit on the magisterial bench and decide knotty points of law argued by counsel before him. If promotion is to be the order of the day among deserving Clerks of the Bench, it has only to be carried one step further and select your Supreme Court Judges from among tho Resident Magistrates. I entirely endorse your sentiment that “New Zealand is rearing up a tremendous crop of sucking lawyers, many of whom must have poor prospects before them,” and who would be better off if apprenticed to some respectable trade; but I did not in my letter infer that it was “ out of this sort of material that efficient magistrates are to be made.” I think the whole tenor of my letter would bear the construction that efficiency in such appointments ought to be the one thing aimed at, and not necessarily promotion. There ought to be a certain point beyond which promotion ought not to pass, except where the party seeking promotion (as in the case of District Judge L. Broad) places himself on an equality (so far as test of fitness goes) with those who have been specially trained and educated to a particular profession.—l am, &c., Vox Popull.