The Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, JULY 23, 1913. MAGISTRATE'S COURT BILL.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 23 July 1913, Page 4

The Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, JULY 23, 1913. MAGISTRATE'S COURT BILL.

The Magistrate's Court Amendment Bill, which passed its second reading in the House of Representatives on Friday last practically without discussion, contains several provisions that are open to Serious criticism. One of these is the provision that requires that Magistrates shall be appointed exclusively from the ranks of the legal! profession. As the Dunedin Star points out, the restriction proposed in regard to the field from which appointments to the Bench may ''be made is in direct opposition to a specific recommendation contained in the report of the Public Service Commission. The Commissioners came to the conclusion that the personnel of our Magistracy was susceptible of improvement, and suggested two methods of achieving this improvements raising the remuneration, and promoting to the Bench suitable clerks of court who have passed their solicitors' examination. By his Public Service Act Mr Herdman showed himself a reformer bent on substituting I promotion by merit for promotion by ! seniority. By his Magistrate's Court Bill he deliberately shuts. the door of promotion by merit on an important section of employees in the Justice Department. Incidentally he also lends colour to the complaint, originally (made! in* connection with his recent dealings with the Public Trust Office, that he is acting with partiality towards the profession to which he belongs. The legal profession Is so strongly over-represented in Parliament that this aspect of the case seems to have been overlooked. The Magistrate's Bill would naturally not foe" scrutinised very closely by lay members, who, moreover, have probably little knowledge of certain aspects of it; and, just as tiW»Kft W» lawyer* in Parliament

would not go out of tboir way to.emphasise a. provision conserving certaiin well-paid.positions —wrJl paid, as for as Civil Service go—to their own profession.^The Magistracy has been hitherto regarded as the ultimate .ambition of clerks of the court. The raising'of its maximum emolument to £BOO increases its desirability to men whoso maximum is now exactly half that sum; but the Bill proposes to make that ambition <unattainable. Why? Those who have become clerks of courts enter the Justice Department by way of the Junior Oivil Service examination, and only those standing highest on the pass lists are selected. Then they have passed the Senior Oivil Service examination, and many of them, with the (Magistracy in view, have also passed the solicitor's examination. Their whole training and experience, gathered as it is in the courts themselves, fit them for the Magistrate's Bench better than anything else j oould conceivably fit them. At one time it was the rule that the Magistracy was recruited from their ranks, and a practice which gave the community such men as the late Mr Carew, Mr Bishop, /and Mr Beetham cannot be condemned unheard.