Poverty Bay Standard. Published Every Evening. GISBORNE: FRIDAY, JANUARY 19, 1883.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1251, 19 January 1883, Page 2

Poverty Bay Standard. Published Every Evening. GISBORNE: FRIDAY, JANUARY 19, 1883.

It was certainly a grievous hardship upon suitors in this District to have to attend at Napier, more than ninety miles off,land to have to convey their witnessess thither, and to maintain them when there. To many persons this state of things must have amounted to a virtual denial of justice, to say nothing of the inconvenience to prosecutors and witnesses in criminal cases, and the expense to which the Government was put in carrying them about the country. We, therefore, hail with satisfaction, the Proclamation of Circuit Sittings of the Supremo Court for Gisborne. But little good will accrue from this step if the District Court is to be abolished, and no Supreme Court Office is to be established here. The District Court has been amost beneficient institution in this place. Scores of pounds have been saved to suitors, and to the Government since its establishment in 1879, and the advantages that have flowed from the circumstance of our possessing machinery on the spot for dealing with bankruptcy, probate, and administration matters are of a sort which cannot be calculated in money. Only a short time ago, the family of a deceased settler were enabled at once to draw a sum of money from the Bank, of which they stood in urgent need, solely by the promptitude with which the probate of the will was issued from the District Court Office. If it had been necessary to apply for probate to the Supreme Court a delay of at least a month would have ensued, and all that time these unfortunate persons would have stood out of their money, besides incurring exactly double the expense which the application to the District Court entailed. But we are more than willing to see the District Court go if only we have a Supreme Court office in its stead. Such an office can he inaugurated at an expense certainly not exceeding £5O per annum, and we submit, that we are entitled to have such an office. The mam objects of taxation are military defence, public works (we only know what they mean by report) and last though and not least, the administration of justice, it is obviously only fair that a rising community like this which contributes appreciably to the revenue of the country should participate to a reasonable extent, in the benefits which flow from a well-organisi-d Government If the Government will only do its part the people of this district are prepared to do theirs, by cheerfully sacri-

ficing their time, when it is necessary, ! to attend as jurors and witnesses, and generally by the manifestation of that respect for the law and its administrators, which it is everywhere the pride of Englishmen to foster and maintain. For our part we are firmly convinced of the excellence of the substance of our English laws, although we fully admit the many defects of its form, and in its procedure. But that law thanks to legislation of the character of the Supreme Court Act, 1882, is : now gradually extricating itself from ; the barbaric disorder in which it lay I at the beginning of this century, and I assuming a shape worthy of its in- . trinsic and substantial merits. It only requiress the gradual and cautious codification of its different branches on the model of the admirable dige t

of Sir Fitzjames Stephen, and care on the part of the Executive in regard to administrative details to render it a noble body of jurisprudence unsurpassed in the world for its justice its liberality, its grand common sense, its practical sagacity, and its adaptability io the daily wants ot mankind We trust, therefore, that he memorial from the Gisborne Bar praying for the establishment of a Supreme Court I Iff ce in this town, will meet with the careful and favorable consideration of the Minister of Justice. Mr Connolly, himself a lawyer of wide experience, must be perfectly well aware where the shoe pinches in these matters. He, at least, ought to know perfectly well, that if all the business of our law courts is to be transacted in Napier or Wellington it will avail little that the actual trials are to take place in Gisborne.