Poverty Bay Standard. Published Every Evening. GISBORNE : THURSDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1882.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1225, 14 December 1882, Page 2

Poverty Bay Standard. Published Every Evening. GISBORNE : THURSDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1882.

Of all the prerogatives of a British subject there is none perhaps of which so loud a boast is made as the justice accorded to every man, high and low, rich and poor alike, in the land in which he lives so long as the British flag waves over that land. But of all the fallacies, of all the empty boasts, that ever Englishmen make, this is at the same time the vainest and most empty. No man under the British rule can expect justice unless he is prepared to pay for it, and that at such an exorbitant rate that it becomes very frequently the case that the individual who is seeking simply his just and honest rights finds himself beggared and pauperised in the quest of his much boasted prerogative. How this state of affairs, monstrous and iniquitous as it is, may be best rectified is a question which has long occupied the attention of our best and wisest legislators, but as yet no solution of the problem has been arrived at. The overdrawn picture of justice blindfold with her scales in one hand and her sword in the other, has no longer a typical or even allegorical semblance to the reality. We have Courts and we have Judges ; we have Crown Prosecutors and Attorneys-General, Commissioners in Bankruptcy, Resident Magistrates, and a staff of the great unpaid whose name is legion. The judicial surroundings of this Colony form no unimportant item of its expenj diture, and yet the greatest possible extravagance a man can be guilty of is to seek justice from the law. There are many ways ©f leading an extravagant and ruinous life ; a couple of yachts, a string of racehorses, two or three seasons spent Between Homburg and Monaco, a French cook and an English mistress, have all been large items in the category of thorough ruinations, but all these combined, aye, and even quadrupled, are nothing in comparison with a good lawsuit. (It matters little whether yea a.t right or wrong, except that the person in wrong generally gets the best of it). Cow mencingsometimes out of caut e» most trivial, these suits run into the most gigantic proportions with a speed that must be expertenced before it can obtain belief ; and while law is being served out by the bucketful, the unfortunate suitor could have his thirst allayed by one single cupful of justice. There is the rub. We want more justice and less law, but until the judges are compelled to hear causes without the preliminary robberies which red-tapism enforces, we can never get it. Take the instance of a man,ruined by trusting his friends, by the specious and interested interference of others, ostensibly for his own protection, who, finding himself left without a single shilling in the world, applies to the law of his country to obtain for him such just and reasonaole settlement as may be possible. The law takes his money. The law dictates to him certain absurd and needless formula through which he is to go, and when he has gone through such formula, leaves him exactly in the same position as when he applied to it. What is the use of telling such a man that he can obtain justice by the law ? Never was a sentiment more prostituted and abused than the absurdly exaggerated one that the law is justice, and justice is the birthright and prerogative of every British subject. The British subject can nave exactly as much law as he can pay for, and not one iota more. The justice is simply held out as a bait and an inducement for people to enter into litigation. Even in the lower courts how often do we hear the cry, “ I can’t afford to go to law,” and the lower Courts, voracious enough it is true, are by no means to be held in comparison, so far as the actual cost of (so-called) justice is concerned, to Her Majesty’s Supreme Court of New Zealand.