The New Zealand Times. (PUBLISHED DAILY.) MONDAY, JULY 15, 1878.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5397, 15 July 1878, Page 2

The New Zealand Times. (PUBLISHED DAILY.) MONDAY, JULY 15, 1878.

Wb have been at some trouble to report "what may be called the dramatic incidents of a recent trial In the Supremo Court, in hope that having thus publicly hold the mirror up before the eyes of the parties, the chief ‘ transgressor or performer ’might bo brought to a sense of the impropriety, to use the fullest term we can find, of his public conduct. We fear that Mr. Barton is incorrigible; the hopelessness of the case is in the fact that he appears to believe that he has a mission, and is guided by a principle. His client, for the time, is peerless, like Dulcinea del Toboso, arid the Court a wicked enchanter who is bent upon disparaging the beauty.and transforming the person and character of the Queen of his brief, and the lady of his 'forensic love. He has suffered already in this cause,' and the imprudent sympathy which awarded him the public honor of o seat in the House of Representatives, as one of the members for the Metropolitan City, whilst he was still in prison undergoing merited punishment for an offence against' the discipline and the authorityof the Supreme Court, may have led him to believe that the people desire, or can approve, persistence in a course of conduct which, derogating from the dignity of the Court' and the credit of the Bar, interferes seriously with' the orderly administration of justice. There is a spirit of insubordination abroad just now which - finds, unfortunately, example and encouragement in high places even here. It pleases our Premier practically to . set .aside her Mai jesty’s representative in this colony, to repudiate even tho formal interference•with our local affairs which our connection with the home country still imposes upon the imperial authorities, and to talk, or write, about the election- of a; Governor. He has. hot ■ spared the Supremo Court.. A scene in the. House of Representatives in which he figured will not soon be forgotten _ by those who had the pain; to, witness it. ) When Major AxiaNßoN;;Btung by the reiteration; of gross calumnies, challenged Sir George: Grey to repeat out of doors, unprotected by his privolego of Parliament, that which ho had just said in the House, in order that lie ihighV give him the opportunity

of substantiating it on his oath in a Court of Justice if he dared—the Premier was not ashamed to .say- that the gentleman whom lie had maligned only desired to bring him before a Court in which his (Major Atkinson’s) relative presided in ■ order ' that he might Sbcuro his punishment. Class is being set against class, labor against capital; the poor man with one vote is urged to believe that he is being oppressed, by the rich man with his forty-five votes ; general discontent is being fomented, and troublous times, and days of privation and distress for the real workers, such as have been brought upon them in a neighboring colony by the folly of their rulers,—may be in store for us here. -

The best security for liberty in a democratic .community is ' in the Courts of Justice, and in the proper administration of the law. It is the interest of "the whole community that what we might venture to call the saoredness of the judicial tribunal should be maintained, and that oiir Courts, from the : highest to the lowest; should be surrounded with the public respect and reverence, and their proceedings be marked by the decorous observances of forms which experience has shown to be indispensable for the orderly conduct of business. It is the duty, as it is the interest; of the people to resent any proceedings on the part of any person, which shall' tend to lessen. public respect for, or to impede the orderly transaction of, the business in our Courts of Justice, or to insult or bring into unmerited contempt those who are appointed to preside in them. If Mr. Barton had been pleading in a Court in the backwoods of America before a magistrate sitting with his feet on the table, and who occupied himself by picking his. teeth with a bowie-knife, whilst he occasionally “cleared” the learned counsel by a squirt of tobacco juice, the temper shown in ; his niode of dealing with the Court might be held to be unobjectionable, as being in keeping with the surroundings. l But in the Supremo Court here there, are none.‘of these, conditions or surroundings. ' if . If any wrong existed in the practice of the Court, for the redress of which Mr. Barton' was struggling, ho would be entitled to and would receive support and sympathy;: but we cannot discover that there is such a wrong existing, or that ho is’moved by any other purpose than a determination. to ,! have his own way and, in that pursuit, to set the Judges on the bench at defiance.

There is probably not on this side of the Line an abler Judge or a more conscientious and hqnorable man than Mr. ! Justice Richmond; and the public sense of propriety is offended by such undignified wrangling as that in which he was forced to share by the action of counsel upon the late occasion. We feel assured that the people of * Wellington cannot and do not approve of such proceedings, and that public opinion will sustain the Court in taking peremptory and severe measures to preserve order and dignity in the public administration of the law.