MR. BARTON’S CHARGES.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5324, 20 April 1878, Page 3

MR. BARTON’S CHARGES.

’ It will be seen by the following letter 1 , sent by Mr. G. E. Barton, M.H.R., to the Hon. the Minister of Justice, that Mr. Barton ,declines to make definite and specific charges against anyi of the officers of the Resident Magistrate’s Court. It will be remembered that Mr. Crawford, R.M., and Mr. B. Baker, clerk of the court, wrote to the Minister of justice asking for an inquiry. _ The letters were forwarded to Mr. Barton, and he replied asunder:—

“Ihave the honor to acknowledge the receipt, on April 13; of your letter dated April 11, 1878, enclosing a copy of Mr. Crawford's and Mr. Baker’s letters of the 6th April. With regard to Mr. Crawford’s pretence that in my speech to the Wellington electors I insinuated that he possibly tampered with the voting papers at the last election, I have to’say that a reference to my speech, published in the Otago Daily Times of A.pril 3, where I am correctly reported on this subject, will show that Mr. Crawford had no shadow of foundation for his complaint. Had I intended to charge Mr. Crawford with tampering with the voting papers, I should have done so distinctly and not by insinuation. As to the statements made both by Mr. Crawford and Mr. Baker with respect to what they term ‘certain charges’ which they do not specify, against certain officers whom they do not name, I- beg to say that although I made specific charges against the administration of the Resident Magistrate’s Court, I carefully abstained from pointing to any individual lest I should hereafter be forced into the position of defending myself before Judges whom I have charged with fostering in the inferior Courts the state of things of which I complain. I remember too well the Bridges scandal and how certain powerful gentlemen dared Mr. Bridges to the proof, and in the same breath threatened him with a prosecution for perjury if he opened his mouth. I note also that when Mr. George Jones' boldly persisted in charging the Attorney-General with corruption, and when Parliament, at the expense of the taxpayers; directed a prosecution to clear the Attorney-General’s character, Judge Williams, with the assistance of Judge Johnston, contrived to exclude all proof of the truth of Mr. Jones’s charges, and " thus endeavored to reduce the jury to the necessity of finding Jones guilty. I also note that this judicial juggle was perpetrated under cover of a repealed English statute, only capable of being treated as law in New Zealand in case the Judge should consider it ‘ applicable to the circumstances of the colony.’ I have also observed how every possible question except the question all parties professed to have met to try was raised and investigated, and I find that George Jones only escaped the destruction intended for him because a jury drawn from the middle classes was bold enough to fling to the winds the directions of the Judges, and acquitted Mr, Jones of the libel, leaving Mr. Whitaker’s character exactly where it was before. With these beacons before me I cannot but believe that the object of Messrs. Crawford and Baker in ostensibly desiring for an inquiry is not so much to vindicate the Resident Magistrate’s Court as to secure an opportunity of silencing me by civil or criminal proceedings. In Dunedin, in 1866, I bad unfortunate experience of a trial for malicious prosecution before Mr. Justice Richmond and an assorted jury, and have no desire to repeat in Wellington a similar trial before the same Judge and an assorted jury, picked from the list of ninety-one (dead and alive) of the gentlemen whose interest it is to keep things as they are. I beg therefore to decline placing myself in the position of a private prosecutor.”