D.—No. 28.

PROCEEDINGS IN THE COURT OE APPEAL.

7

With respect to special publicity, I believe it to be true that notices of Smythies' intention to apply for admission were put up at the offices of the various Registrars of the Supreme Court; but as these notices gave no hint of his former conviction, they were simply worthless as giving publicity to the intended application as that of a convict. The further facts of the case are as follow : —Shortly after the receipt by Smythies of the memorandum of conference authorizing his admission, application was made on his behalf in open Court on the sth January, 1866. Eleven of the profession had signed a protest against his admission, and one of them, Mr. James Smith, applied for and obtained an adjournment to the 16th January. In the interim, the memorandum of conference, placed by you at Smythies' disposal, was industriously circulated by him ; and when it was fully ascertained that he had already obtained in his favour " the judgment and decision of the full Court" (as you term it), without an opportunity of opposing him having been afforded to a single member of the legal profession, the Bar simply withdrew from opposition as hopeless, supposing that the Judges at Dunedin would, as a matter of course, uphold their previous decision, ancl that, as the Judges of the Court of Appeal had already privately prejudged the case, an appeal would simply be an expensive farce. If the course adopted by the Judges had been specially selected with the view of stifling opposition, it could not have been more effectual. But I have the authority of the Attorney-General, Mr. James Smith, Mr. James" Macassey, and Mr. George Cook (four of the highest names of the Colonial Bar), for informing you that your allegation of their acquiescence (and of that of the great majority of the profession in Dunedin) in Smythies' admission is utterly without foundation, and in this statement Mr. Harvey, who moved the order of admission, fully concurs. The Attorney-General, as a fact, was not in Otago at the time the order was applied for. It appears to me that before cavilling at the fairness of my statements you would have done well to bo assured of the accuracy of your own. Tour next tangible allegation with respect to my judgment is, that it is said therein, with reference to Smythies' admission, " of their (the Judges) powers in the matter there can be no question ; but there can be as little question, from the action afterwards taken by the Legislature, that it was intended that those powers should be exercised according to the spirit of English precedents." This statement you affirm to be " as erroneous in law as it is derogatory to the Court." The facts are plain, and require slight comment. In November, 1860, Mr. Justice Johnston, in his judgment in re Henry Bunny, thus stated the law on this subject: —" The duty of this Court is two-fold. It has first to see that the applicant has some one of the necessary technical qualifications under the different laws of the Colony ; and, secondly, to take care that he is of such fair fame and character as to be fit to be invested by the Court with the privileges of a solicitor, and to be held out to the public as worthy of confidence in the most intimate fiduciary relations. And I must remark that the exercise of the most vigilant care in the latter respect may be specially looked for from tho Supreme Court of a young Colony." And in another part of the same judgment the learned Judge proceeds to state that in these matters the Court " is to be governed by the spirit and general principles On which the English decisions have been based." This judgment was approved of, on appeal, by the Privy Council, and may therefore be taken to be good law. Relying on the "vigilant care to bo specially looked for from the Supreme Court," the Legislature, when remodelling, in 1861 and 1862, the law respecting legal practitioners, left most ample discretionary powers to the Judges on the subject of admissions to practice, and these powers remained unrevoked until 1866, the year in which Smythies was admitted ; but when it became known that the Chief Justice of the Colony, in correspondence with a convicted forger, had instructed him how to " obtain the judgment, so to speak, of the full Court on the merits of his case," without the possibility of a single member of the Bar being heard against him; —when, the opposition of the Bar having been stifled by the judgment so obtained, the Judges proceeded, in direct contravention both of the spirit and of the letter of the law of England, to admit this man, rendered infamous according to English law by his conviction for a crimen falsi, and liable to seven years' transportation if he ventured to practice as attorney in England ; —then the Legislature, deeming it time to interpose, by " The Law Practitioners Amendment Act, 1866," prohibited from practice, without one dissentient voice, the protege of His Honor the Chief Justice, and forbad all admissions of similar criminals in future. Seldom has a more direct and deliberate censure been pronounced by a Legislative Assembly : never has one been more thoroughly deserved. No such insult has ever before been offered by a Colonial Bench to a Colonial Bar as that which forced the convict Smythies into the reluctant ranks of tho legal profession of New Zealand ; and no decision has ever been given more calculated to shake the public confidence in the honor and integrity of the Supreme Court itself, than that which declared that even a conviction for forgery was not sufficient to prevent the convict from being accredited to act as one of its officers. I now turn to that part of your letter which refers to one written by the Hon. Mr. Fox, in tho Wellington Independent, ten months ago. lamat a loss to understand why you should have gone out of your way to arraign Mr. Fox's conduct in your letter to me; but as you have done so, I shall exercise my right to comment upon what you have written on the subject. The first thing to be remarked here, is the want of common courtesy and of common justice displayed by you in bringing such charges and uttering such threats as those made and held out by you against the Premier of the Colony in a letter to a third person, leaving him dependent on the will of that third person for even the chance of a reply. For the rest, it is chiefly characterized by the peculiar disregard, both of facts and of law, which has marked your dealing with this case. Tou affirm that Mr. Fox's letter " imputes to you sympathy with crime, and desire and intention to give effect to that sympathy by wilful misinterpretation of the law;" that "it threatens the independence of your legal judgment, and constitutes an attempt to interfere with a then pending litigation;" ancl you proceed to state that if Mr. Fox had not been a high political functionary, you would have struck him off the rolls or suspended him from practice unless he had made a full and public apology. As at the time the letter was published, and for about six months afterwards, Mr. Fox occupied no political office, the reason given for your quiescence is not entitled to great weight. As for the first interpretation you put on his letter, I have merely to observe that his words will not bear the meaning you attempt to fix on them. He attributes to you sympathy, not with crime, but with criminals ; and