South Canterbury Times, FRIDAY, JANUARY 21, 1881.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2447, 21 January 1881, Page 2

South Canterbury Times, FRIDAY, JANUARY 21, 1881.

The Police Magistrates who reign at the extreme ends of the colony are evidently eligible subjects for superannuation. We have repeatedly referred to the painful whimsicalities and absurdities of,the presiding genius at Dunedin. Mr Barstow, of Auckland, like Mr I. N. Watt, of Dunedin, seems to be bent on distinguishing himself by occasional displays of arbitrary authority. Mr Watt’s peculiar weakness oscillates between women and children—the dissolute and abandoned out-growths of the Otago bottle license from which some of Dunedin’s prominent elders derive their subsistence, and the street Arabs who are the offshoots of dissipated fathers and dissolute mothers. Mr Watt is as gentle and mild with the irreclaimable females who stalk like a pestilence of vice in the city devoted to Synods and churches, as he is arbitrary and unmerciful in dealing with children. Mr Barstow’s magisterial weakness lies in another direction apparently. Not very long since one of the cleverest and most genial caterers for the public amusement that ever graced the New Zealand stage, happening in a moment of forgetfulness or undue exhilaration to make a trifling disturbance in the hotel where he was residing, was forthwith bundled by this Auckland worthy into gaol for a month. A still more glaring instance of the abuse of magisterial functions has just been telegraphed from Auckland. We are told that a working man named Duff was charged with neglecting to fulfil an order by the Magistrate for the payment of 5s per week, maintenance money for his mother. Duff pleaded inability, but offered his mother a home with his family. She refused to accept it, but wanted money. Duff was sentenced by Mr Barstow to a month’s imprisonment. It is added that Duff’s wife

and family are unprovided for, and that the case has excited considerable comment.

If the foregoing facts are correct, it is surely the duty of Mr Barstow’s superiors to gravely consider whether his presence on the Bench is likely to be advantageous or inimical to the public welfare. The best of magistrates, as well as judges, are apt to blunder at times, but the casting of poor but honest men into gaol after this ahitrary and unnecessary fashion is no ordinary blunder. It is one of those blunders for which the author must be held responsible. We have here the case of a man' imprisoned for a tolerably lengthened period because he cannot do an impossibility. Not only is the prisoner subjected to magisterial outrage but his wife and family are made to suffer by the removal of their bread-winner. Of

course there may be circumstances connected with the case of which we are unaware, but which to some extent may justify the apparent harshness of the police magistrate. In that case an enquiry should be held, and the explanatory facts should have the fullest publicity. The facts as they have been telegraphed are likely to have a bad effect on colonial society, because they will afford a precedent for Magistrates who are in dined to be arbitrary and tyrannical, and an incentive to aged and perhaps somewhat vindictive people who desire to wreak their vengeance for imaginary grievances on their relatives.

Luckily there are Magistrates whose doings will stand the utmost criticism, and who are ornaments to the Bench that so many desecrate. Timaru in that respect has been wonderfully fortunate. But it is to be lamented that the Bench of some of the larger cities in the colony, where a large amount of important work has to be done, and where the stipendiary magistrate has a great influence in repressing or stimulating vice and crime and moulding society, should be badly neglected. The thrusting of men, and especially children, previously untainted, into the cells designed for felons on account of trivial offences, is a thing that cannot be tolerated. In the first place it is impolitic, because it tends to the manufacture of criminals out of the raw material. The practice of allowing habitual profligates and wantons who prey on society, and propagate vice and misery in every direction, to make a convenience of the gaols of the colony is just as pernicious. Magistrates who will administer justice sternly but cautiously, are what are wanted for the crowded centres of population.