PERSONALITY OF THE WEEK.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 135, 10 June 1933, Page 8

PERSONALITY OF THE WEEK.

This is the well-known sporting baronet, Sir Charles Lewis Clifford, of Stonyhurst, Canterbury. He is the third baronet and succeeded his father, the NO. 391. highly esteemed Sir George, in 1930. Sir Charles is engaged in sheep farming and the breeding and running of blood horses. The name is a, household word throughout the Dominion. He was born in 1885 and educated at St. Patrick's College, Wellington, and at Stonyhurst College, Lancashire (founded by I Jesuit clergy in 1794). Sir Charles served in the Great War, first with the Lancashire Hussars (Imperial Yeomanry), later with the Lancashire Fusiliers and with the Lancashire Regiment (service battalions). He is unmarried.

It is understood from perusal of current literature that the New Zealand J.P. is likely to take a larger hand in the administration of justice than heretofore THE —"more after the English GREAT UNPAID, pattern"—the Minister of Justice mentioning that in the hub of Empire a retired soldier is often a paid magistrate.' No, he is never a corporal or even a sergeant-major, but there are manycases where the presiding Solon has been a field officer—from major up to general. Indeed, the unpaid magistracy has often been recruited from admirals, generals and other persons used

to wielding authority. New Zealand, too, has been fortunate—especially of late years—in its unpaid magistracy, representing as they do the people whom they try—or help to. try. Much facetiousness has been expended, by the many-headed on the J.P., and nearly always without sufficient basis. Mind you, the public was entitled to smile in the days of long ago when a newly-appointed J.P. in a southern city appeared for the first time on the Bench at ten o'clock in the morning attired in full

[evening dress—adding, it might be said, a French flavour to the proceedings. Most uncalled for, too, in the 'nineties was the exclamation of a Sydney paper: "There are four hundred J.P.'s in New Zealand—many of them can read and write." For the last thirty years, however, the majority of unpaid magistrates have been unexceptionable, and the old riddle is never hoard, "Why is Mr. X ■ like necessity?" the answer being "Because necessity knows no law."' To-day the riddle has no application, has it?

A willing exile from New Zealand, engased with a stub of pencil among the law courts of the Commonwealth, writes, inter alia, to ask if there is anv movcNEW INTERIORS, ment in this Dominion to make tlie lives of people who come to court any brighter. He mentions the almost incurable habit of British Governments everywhere in building the most dismal places for the purposes of public justice, particularly mentioning the deplorable interiors,

which make even the innocent, seeing such a sight, feel that damp, dark and dismal dungeons arc yawning for him. Recalls, too, the days when herbs were strewn on the Bench at Homo to keep his lordship from getting gaol fever; when, as Dickens explained, steams of condensed breath redolent of gin and other aromatic medicines ran down the walls and when nearly all courts ought to have had the sign "All hope abandon, ye who enter here." Wants to know if we have any air and and pictures in cur courts. Says that the old Footscray Court (Vic.) is a forbidding place, the plaster damp and peeling from the walls, gloomy and dismal, and that the Port Melbourne Court, as well as the Collingwood one, is on a par. But—here is the point.. The newest Melbourne suburban lower courts are homes of brightness and art, the bright walls gaily hung with really good oil paintingslights good, seating accommodation excellent, and so forth. These pictures are nuclei of little national galleries. You almost imagine an old-time Australian police magistrate in one of these new settings angrily ordering the prisoner to. refrain from looking at the oil paintings, claiming pride of place for himself as the chief exhibit.

THOUGHTS FOR TO-DAY. It is easy enough to be pleasant When life flows on like a song. But the man worth while is the "one who can smile When everything goce dead wrong. —Ella Wheeler Wilcox. Moderation is the silken strintr running through the pearl chain of all "virtues.— Bishop Hall.