THE WEEK, THE WORLD, AND WELLINGTON.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9121, 22 June 1908, Page 6

THE WEEK, THE WORLD, AND WELLINGTON.

(By Frank Morton.)

Trades' Protection Agencies.—A -Momentous Dwihion.—Loan Macnaihvhthnv— Mu .Tiar.iooK and Tina AprFAii Court. —Munho is Content.—Birr Ckkistoiiuech Wahn't.

The decision of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in the case of Mackintosh v. Dun is one of extraordinary significance and moment, for from that decision there is no appeal. The Privy Council has decided that a commercial or mercantile agency run for profit cannot legidly give information ,to a client, if s ich information is calculated to damage a man's credit. Ihere is no suggestion that the information tfiven by the Dun Agency with reference to Mackintosh and Company was essentially inaccurate or misleading information; but it was such information as damaged the credit o" Mackinotsh and Company. On that being shown, the Supreme Court of New South Wales awarded Mackintosh and Company £BOO damages, expressly stating that the action of defendants had not been actuated by malice. The Full Court of New South Wales reversed the decision. Mackintosh and Company on that appealed to the High Court of Australia, which dismissed the appeal. Mackintosh and Companythereupon appealed t'jt the Privy Council, and the Privy Council upheld the appeal. It is not very easy to see what the Dun Agency will do now, for the decision cuts to the root cf its business in British territory. As good Americans, the Dun people may declaim and .protest, but they must submit; and whenever they furnish other information of the, same sort, in the same wa'y, they must be prepared to pay the piper if the aggrieved party chooses to go to law. Lord Macnaghten was quite clear. "Defendant volunteered information not from a sense of duty, but in the course of a businesM conducted for profit." If that is illegal, the fact goes to the root of other businesses than Dun's. It affects every trades'protcction agency in the Empire.

Lord Macnaghten is a great jurist and a very doughty and famous man. Scores of anecdotes concerning him might be recalled, He is, of cuurßc utterly fearless, not in the silghtrst degree concerned about the conseouences of his decisions. One anecdote. Some years ago, by virtue of I his office of Lieutenant of the County ! Antrim, he presided at the Carrickfergus Petty Sessions. There, to the ucter consternation of the Belfast magistrate who happened to be in attendance, and to the complete overwhelming of all the local Shallows, Lord Macnaghten coolly delivered himself of a dictum which completely' upset the whole accepted interpretation of the Act of Parliament concerned. Sitting as a member of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, he is not at all impressed by the dignity of the High Court of Australia. Tt is even improbable (be it said without irreverence) that he even remembers the name of a singular member of the Appeal Court of New Zealand. It will tie within the memory of most of you that Lord Macnaghten some years ago delivered a judgment which perturbed and irritated the Court of appeal of New Zealand very much. On that occasion the Privy Council reversed the decision of the New Zealand Court of Appeal in the famous Porirua Trust case, and some of the strictures passed on the New Zealand Court of Appeal were truly bitter to be borne. There was almost an uproar in legal circles here, and it was no secret that our learned judges were incensed. So much ,so that, on the first opportunity, they took opportunity to attempt to vindicate themselves in the eyes of the public—a somewhat exceptional course to adopt, and with what measure of success I cannot pretend to say. All this, you will understand, was joy and gladness' and sweet honey to the palate of the irrepressible Mr E. G. Jellicoe, whose constant friction with members of the New Zealand Bench was matter of notoriety. Mr Jellicoo waited for his opportunity. Then one day when he was addressing the Court of Appeal, he got it. His line of argument incensed their Honours, till finally Mr Justice Denniston (not, perhaps, the most wise and prudent of our judges: with all reverence and humility be it said)interrupted the learned counsel. "It seems to me that you are trifling with the intelligence of the Court, Mr Jellicoe." " Far from, it, your Honour," said Mr Jellicoe, who had waited so well, " far from it. I leave the intelligence of the Court to the Privy Council." Then there fell upon the devoted head of learned counsel, the censorious remarks of every member of the' Court; but Mr Jellicoe, who! had a very hard head indeed, suffered rio grievous harm. ******

Mr G. S. Munro, sometime the vituperated General Manager of the Christchurch Exhibition, is enjoying himself in Europe. He ' finds with delight that there have been many blunders ant' delays in the opening l of the Franco-British Exhibition in London, and that the patience and resignation of English exhibitors utterly .transcends anything he ever experienced in New Zealand. He has been to horse races in Paris, and generously admits that some things he savv there were not up to the New Zealand standard. His daughter is prominent in a fashionable production at one of the theatres. Altogether, Mr G. S. Munro is doing vjry well ; and I, for one, am right heartily glad to hear it. Certainly, he owes Christchurch nothing. As hs went about .his duties there, he Was pestered and beset by a thousand wasps and less reputable insects. There were rules to be observed—rules not of Munro's making —ami he would not give way an inch. When exhibitors tried to creep under the regulations, or bluff the manager into some other unwarrantable concession, Munro would grin, and tell them to go, say, Whangarei. Then the' uwuepers an J bluffers would write a 1,-ct.r a yard lung to one or other thd Christehuren papers, proving that Munro had no tact. So the game went on, as dirly and as silly a game as need be. but the one thing, among *,he smaller things, that i have moat admired in this Ward Government is the manner in which it stood to Munro. I have been concerned

with averal international exhibitions, and known several managers—one or two oi them quite famous. It seems to me that Munro, tact or no tact, was about the most capable and the most doggedly honest of them all.