THE PORIRUA TRUST CASE.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIV, Issue 99, 27 April 1903, Page 4

THE PORIRUA TRUST CASE.

Wo published in Saturday.-; issue a protest delivered by the Chief Justice, Sir Robert Stout, against the attack lately made on the New Zealand Appeal Court by the Privy Council in the matter of the Porirua Trust. To-day our readers will find in another column articles from both Dunedin dailies, emphasising the contention of, Sir Robert Stout and Mr Justice Williams, that the comments made upon the case by the Privy Council were unmerited and indefensible. The judgment of the Privy Council has already appeared in these pages, and we need not refer, to it in detail; but we think that everyone who took the trouble to find his way through the laborious imputations and offensive innuendoes in which the document abounded, will that there was nothing in the conduct of "the case or the attitude of.oui , judges towards it to justify this unprecedented onslaught upon the reputation of our highest civil tribunal. ... ;

We need not enter into the law of the case; hut the manner in which Sir Robert Stout handles it suggests that there is probably a great deal in the contention raised by himself and Justice Williams that the Privy Council has a very inadequate knowledge of colonial legislation, a«d colonial life. Our Chief Justice would hardly aTTow himself to declare publicly tliat the Privy Council knows nothing of our statutes, our conveyancing terms, and our history if he were not prepared to substantiate his charges. Still, laymen may be excused from discussing pohvts on which trained , lawyers have disagreed; and for our present purposes it matters little whether the decision of our Appeal Court was from the legal standpoint, right or wrong. What we object to in the Privy Council decision is not that' it' reverses the New Zealand award, but that it is couched in language which conveys most offensive and insulting reflections upon the honour and integrity of our High Court of' Justice.

To put it briefly, the Lords of the Privy Council have ventured to suggest that the verdict of the New Zealand Court of Appeal was directly due to the. influence of the Government of the day. In other words, because our judges and lawyers happen to differ from British judges over a subject on which we may be expected to know more of tho facts than they, we are informed that our judges lire necessarily dishonest and corrupt. That is the bald and j>lain Eng-

liah of the philippic thundered forth by the Privy Council, and we do not wonder that it has caused the indignation of '• thoughtful people throughout the colony. The protest of Mr Justice Williams, temperate and dignified as it is, presents a curious contrast to the unqualified and ingenious vituperation of the Lords of the Privy Council. We believe, that it will take a great deal more than such gratuitous insults to shake the confidence of the colony in its judges; and with that, as "Mi , Justice Williams has said, they may be well content, inspite of the. supercilious^ l impertinences of "four strangers sitting 14,000 miles away."