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New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5473, 11 October 1878, Page 4

As probably | few people are aware of the existence of the despotic tyranny of tile Judges alluded to by Sir George Grey in his speech on tire Judicial Commission Bill, we extract the following from Hansard, as relating more especially to the Press : —“ I would first ask, how is public opinion to be ascertained ? That is the great question which must be answered by those who contend that the proper check upon the Judges is public opinion. Before they lay down that rule, they must consider how public opinion shall be ascertained. I contend that the Press is tho proper means of ascertaining it. But then the Press is more under the control of the Judges than their own Courts ; that is to say, that tho very persons who do punish too severely are to bo judged and censured by a Press which dares not censure their acts ; for the printers, publishers, and writers might, in their turn, be all imprisoned for fife ; and it seems to mo intolerable that such a power over a Press called free should be claimed by any person. . . . But, sir, the Press is not present in their • Courts ; the Press is at a distance from them ; it does not watch and see what takes place there ; the Press does not disturb the peace of their Courts ; and all the arguments which are in favor of tho power being given to the Judges in tho one case, fail in the other. I say that they ought not to have the power over the Press they claim to have ; aud it is our duty, as inhabitants of a free country, to put such restrictions on them as are placed upon all persons, whatever office they may hold. I contend, and I think justly, that to clothe the Judges with the power which is attempted to be given to them is not to make them objects of reverence and esteem ;Jt is to make them objects of fear to some, and dislike, nay, perhaps, of possible hatred, toothers,: who imagine they have been injured by them ; it is to set up deities at a distance clothed with, I will say, hateful attributes of power—imprisoning their fellow-men, casting them into an unhealthy prison for their whole period of life—the power of shutting them up in cells where their cries for mercy to the Crown and to their fellow-men can never be heard, where their cries for justice to any Court of Appeal can never ba listened to. I say that to clothe any human beings with powers of that kind over their fellow-men is to render them the fetishes of a dread African superstition. Yet these are the powers with which the Judges are to be clothed, these are the powers with which the legal gentlemen in this House would dressup theidols which they themselves worship and would have us forced to bow down before.” We were previously unaware that the Press was more under the Judges’ control than their own Courts, or that the Press dared not censure tho acts of tho Judges. We believe that a month hardly ever passes in which the judgment of some Court is not discussed and censured by some section of tho Press in England. Wo were previously unaware of tho existenca of raedimval dungeons in our midst, whero our fellow-men can be oast into an unhealthy prison fur their whole period of fife, where their cries for mercy can never be heard, and have anxiously inquired for tho New Zealand Bastille, but have hitherto failed to discover it.