HOW HE BECAME CHIEF JUSTICE.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume VIII, Issue 2415, 2 October 1886, Page 2

HOW HE BECAME CHIEF JUSTICE.

The following ut from the Sydney Bulletin " Some men are born for great things," but it is not often that a man rises to tho emiuent positioii ot a Chief Justice because the weather was too cold to allow of his beiug a clerk of petty sessions. Sir James Prendergast, of Neiy Zealand, started his colonial caroer as C.P.S. (Clerk of Petty Session) at Maryborough (Victoria) iu the earlier days, and immediately after his accession the authorities at v Melbourne began to be worried by the receipt of sheets of foolscap paper covered with cuneiform inscriptions and footed by a signature that looked like a fight, between a spider and agridiorn. At first, little notice was takon of tho matter, it being concluded the documents were copies of; Belshazzar's washing bill, or something of the kind, which had gone astray, and they wore simply re-direeted to "Post Offico, Babylon; to be left till culled for,"' and passed on. At length, however, the trouble became too great for luunim endurance, and it being discovered that the .illegible sorrows in question issued from Maryborough a commission of inquiry was sent up. They found that Mr Prendergast s office consisted of an old Government tent pitched on a mud bank, the flooring consisting of an inch of water and three of Irish bog, and as it was the depth of winter and bitterly cold a little ice lent variety, of tho scene. Inside this cloth mansion a benumbed clerk of petty sessions was making pot-hooks and hangers in his official capacity as a member of the Civil Service, his stiffened fingers rendering it impossible to produce anything more legible. The Commission as in duty bound, inspected and roportod on the blue nosed officer, but they did not take extenuating circumstances into account these days, and Mr Preudergast received his dismissal. His early ambition being nippod in the bud, lie took to tho law for consolation, and is no* a Chief Justice with a title, instead of a bush Dogberry in a leaky tent. His story uliould point a valuable moral to young men who are unable to writo deconfcly iu cold weather."