Poverty Bay Standard. Published, Every Evening. GISBORNE : WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1882.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1229, 20 December 1882, Page 2

Poverty Bay Standard. Published, Every Evening. GISBORNE : WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1882.

If any further argument could be adduced in support of our frequently advanced demand for the immediate institution of a Supreme Court session in Gisborne, such argument might be found in the number of passengers whose business in the Supreme Court imperatively demanded their exodus from Gisborne on last Friday and the Friday previous. The Union Steam Shipping Company could perhaps afford more accurate details regarding numbers than we ourselves can give, but we feel sure that we are not in the slightest degree exaggerating those numbers when we state that one hundred and thirty is, in reality, under the mark. This embraces all classes of the community ; lawyers and clients, police and prisoners, witnesses and officials, whose business connects them intimately with the session of the Supreme Court presently being holden at Napier. This, calculated at a very moderate expenditure per head, allowing every one of those one hundred and thirty people to remain absent from Gisborne for one week, which is the shortest margin possible to allow for their going and returning, and the conduct of their several businesses with the Court, will, when reduced to figures, amount to the very respectable sum of thirteen hundred pounds taken out of this district, and imposed upou those individuals out of whose pocket it comes, as an absolutely additional and superfluous item in their expenditure. That is to say, that if there were a Supreme Court session in Gis borne that £1,300 would not need to be expended. In reality the extra expenditure outside the district will be found to amount to a much larger sum, but we have computed the amount on the most economical scale, and have not left a margin for small extravagances, which however, are very difficult to avoid, especially in spasmodic visits to a place, which, although divided i from our home by the slight obstacle of unfrequent communication by sea, or a tedious ana uncomfortable journey by land, may be fairly set down as our next door neighbour, with whom we are just sufficiently familiar to find him expensive. This £1,300 repeated four times a year, drains our notover nlenteously supplied coffers of, in round numbers, £5OOO per annum. Added to which we , have the inconvenience of leaving home, and undertaking a journey by aea or land. So that we are not only taxed pecuniarily, but taxed physically, and this simply because we cannot persuade the Government which claims to be the most paternal which has ever had the opportunity of robbing us, to allow us as a favour what our revenue returns, c; • mercantile importance, our population. geographical position, fairly entitle us io claim as a right. Mr Justice Gillies was asked during the late Session of Parliament to lay before the Legislature an expression of opinion as to the necessity or otherwise of the establishment of a Supreme Court here, but we fail to discover that that gentleman has done anything of the sort; and yet, sitting at Napier, lie cannot fail to have been struck with the fact that nearly all the cases heard before him, criminal and civil, derive their being from Poverty Bay. '■ If that fact has hitherto escaped his notice, ; we can hardly blame ourselves, for we have certainly done our utmost to attract his attention to the matter; but we think in the interests of the District in which they are resident, and with a respectful consideration for the “unde derivatur” of the fruitful supply of that very necessary adjunct to their profession, inseparable from it, and dearer to the legal mind than the revered memory of Coke or Blackstone, popularly, or rather unpopularly, known as j “ fees,” the local bar might gracefully make a presentment to His Honor, urging him to I represent our need in this respect in the proper quarter, with a recommendation that our wishes shall be acceded to. Such recom1 mendation, backing up the oft-repeated ut- ; terances of our member, Mr McDonald, to ' the same end, might be effectual in securing i to our patient and long-suffering community 1 the enjoyment, which should have been I given to us long ago, of all the advantages ‘ arising from the establishment of the Supreme ; Court of the Colony in Gisborne.