AN IMPERIAL TRIBUNAL.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 219, 24 December 1910, Page 7

AN IMPERIAL TRIBUNAL.

To the Editor. Sir, —There is a curious but important error which has been made in the newspaper reports of, and tflie comments upon a recent speech, 'by his Excellency the Governor at Wellington. Lord Islington's reference to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council has been quoted as the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords. There is no such committee of the House of Lords. Technically, any member of the House of Lords may be present at tlie hearing of a case, and may vote—for the procedure is, as regards the judgment, a giving of the votes of those present—though in fact only those who have held high judicial office do attend, except in the rare event of the trial of a peer b.v his peers. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council is an actual committee of the Council, consisting of certain members who have had judicial experience in the British Isles, who may or may not be peers of the realm, and' of members who have' held high judicial experience abroad, in India, Canada, South Africa, Australasia, or, indeed, any part of the Emipra While the House of Lords is a final court of appeal for England, Scotland and Ireland in certain cases, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council hears appeals from all parts of the Empire outside the British Isles. It has an astounding jurisdiction, and hears a wonderful variety of cases. It will perhaps be call- 1 ed up to decide upon the legality of a thousand-year-old family custom or religious observance among some Indian hill tribe. Then a case will come before them involving nice points of Roman-Dutch law, from Ceylon or South Africa. A Canadian or Australian case will involve difficult points of high modern finance, or difficult shipping 1 aw-; and perhaps all the resources of the learned committee will be called upon to extract a meaning from some clause in a progressive Licensing or Death Duties Aet of the New Zealand Parliament, or maybe, the case will involve questions of old Maori customs. The committee exercise a jurisdiction such as no court in the world has ever previously exercised over people of every continent, of every color, who speak a multitude of languages, and obey a vast variety of law—but who are under the rule of one King, and it is to ihis Court of Justice that they look in the last resort. Surely, then, Lord Islington is wise in calling attention to the necessity for keeping this tribunal as competent as the statesmanship of the Empire can make it, a problem which calls for, the closest attention from the English Cabinet and the forthcoming Colonial Conference. —I am, etc.. CIVIS BRITAJSNICUS.