GOVERNMENT GRAMMAR.

Press, Volume III, Issue 95, 27 December 1862, Page 2

GOVERNMENT GRAMMAR.

It is a well known story —so well known that we are almost ashamed to use it to point a moral—that a jovial Judge, celebrated as much for the license he allowed himself as for the law he dispensed to others, was discovered shortly after his elevation to the bench drinking a pot of porter in the interval allowed for luncheon during an important trial. Being remonstrated with—" One must" said he "do something to bring oneself down to the level of the Judges." We should like to know what beverage they drink in the Government Buildings to bring themselves down to the level of the Provincial Solicitor. What do they do to themselves in order to arrive at that happy slip-slop indifference to the rules of ordinary composition, which has been introduced by that highly cultivated gentleman into the Law, and which has gradually come to pervade the whole of what Disraeli wittily called " the cerulean literature" of the Province.

Froude, amongst other modern historians, has pointed out, that the history of a country in the past is told more by what is written in its statutes, than by any thing else. If this be so, there will be an epoch in the History of Canterbury written in the language of its laws and Proclamations which will be spoken of in after times as The Duncaniad. A more than ordinarily conspicuous inaccuracy of expression will be called a Duncanism, and the whole art of writing legal documents pregnant with doubt and parturient of litigation will be sublimed into the science of Duncanity. We are called on to make these remarks by a Proclamation which appeared last week signed by Mr. Charles Bowen who is, by the grace of Mr. Moorbouse, at present Deputy Superintendent of this Province. There is no better educated or more gentlemanlike man in the province than Mr. Bowen. He would regard an incorrectness in grammar as a stain not readily to be effaced, did it occur in his private correspondence: yet no sooner does he come within the fatal sphere of government influence than he finds himself proclaiming to mankind the indifferent stuff we shall presently criticize The Government grammar is as catching amongst government employed, as squinting or stuttering amongst nervous children. " Whereas," so runs the Proclamation, " Whereas it is enacted by the Dog Nuisance Ordinance, Session XVIII, No. 3, and the Dog Nuisance Amendment Ordinance, 1802: that the Superintendent of the Province of Canterbury shall from time to time by Proclamation appoint certain places for the registration of Dogs * * * now, therefore, I Charles Bowen, Deputy Superintendent of the said Province, by virtue of the powers in mc invested, do hereby proclaim and declare that the following places shall be the places at which all dogs shall be registered!! And then follows a list of Police Stations at *'Christchurch,Lyttelton, Akaroa, Timaru, Kaiapoi, Rangiora." According to the law, then, as it now stands—for we assume that the proclamation is law— all dogs must be registered in all these stations. Every dog mu9t be registered six times over at the six different police offices of the Province It was surely unnecessary to enact that any dogs should be destroyed. That will follow as a matter of course. We have heard of dogs being banged, shot, poisoned, drowned ; but here is a new mode of death, or at least of torture —registered to death. This is really an idea. Can it have been suggested by old Macey, in Si's _$_-^a r ner —" It is the re-gester that does it;" or canie sausag^ e makers of Canterbury, with fatal and indious art, p have had any hand in Mr. Bowen's prclamatiou ? Really one is compelled to seek for ouof the way explanations for such out of the way Enjish. But this is not all, for the proclamatm goes on to tell us that " the persons duly authorisa to perform" 1

certain "duties" "shall be the officer in char- f OP the time being at the several stations above n-,. tioned" en " This fe a puzzler. "The persons BQall be officer* The persons must be a very singular lot or the officer must be Mrs. Malaprop's <• three gentle men at once." But this officer is not only to be pl Ura i in number, but übiquitous as to place ; he is "f or th time being in charge at the several stations:' Happy man ! No doubt he draws a separate salary f or each "station." Who is this plural officer?" We l lim > heard of pluralities in England, but that is plurality of income, not of labor. The Archdeacon does not deliver a charge in the Cathedral and a lecture to his parishioners 50 miles off at the same instant, though he gets paid for both. But our officer in Canterbury has to pound a bull in Christchurch (?) and register a dog in Timaru at the same instant. However, this proclamation is, ufter all, but a document of secondary importance; let us turn to the law itself. The proclamation is but the work of the pupils; the Ordinance is from the hand of the master in the Government studio Bead !

" The owner of any dog or dogs, three months old or upwards, shall on the Ist day of January, 1863 and on tbe Ist day of January in every succeeding' year, register the same in a book to be kept for tha. purpose, in such places in the said Province as the Superintendent shall from time to time by proclamation appoint." " In a book." The la-v is clear and explicit. There is to be but one bo. k. If it had meant books, it would of course have said " book or books." Witness above—it says the " owner of any dog or do< .." The author has been very careful to say what he means. It would seem to have been enough to say " the owner of any dog v That would h.ie secured the registration of all dogs; but the accurate Bill-drafter wished to be very particular, so it is—" dog or dog.." Therefore when we find the plural omitted in the case of the book, we must assume that it is purposely so omitted. Nothing can be more explicit than the law that there is to be but one book, and that book is " to be kept in such places as the Superintendaut sha\l from time to time appoint." This means, of course, that the book is to bo carried about from place to place. The words "from time to time " indicate the meaning, that tbe Superintendent may alter the place from time to time. The law, therefore, provides for a rolling register— a circuit court of Record, like the Queen's Courts—a register of Assize; carried in a red cart, protected by " the officer " in a icd coat, with a cow's horn at his side, at the sound of which all unregistered dogs will prick up their ears, and rush off to celebrate tbe right which confirms their canine citizenship, and proclaims their canine adolescence. This is the law. The book is, for example, at Rangiora. There all the dogs will be registered. The book will then start to hold its circuit; but, recollect, the dogs must be registered at all the places named in the proclamation. So when the book start.*, all the dogs must start after it. Arrived at Kaiapoi, the process commences of registering the Kaiapoi dogs, and re-registering the Rangiora dogs. This done the cavalcade progresses, aud one fine morning, in Christchurch, we shall be awoke from our slumbers by the arrival of The officer, The book, and all the dogs from the north. The registering, the reregistering, and re-re-registering accomplished, on will sweep the wild rout. Picture to yourselves, if you can, the state of the Province by the time of its arrival at Timaru. Frantic sheepfarmers tearing their hair with fury at the plague of dogs brought amongst their sheep. The one policeman of that lively watering place vainly endeavouring to re-re-re-re-register some refractory cur who is sick of the process. We draw a veil over the conclusion. There is an old Isle of Wight legend of a wizard who charmed all tbe rats to follow the sound of bis pipe, and so piped them all into the sea. And wheu the inhabitants refused him the reward he asked ior delivering them from the rats, he piped all their children into the sea as a punishment. The spirit of the Wizard of the Wight would seem to have possessed the lawgivers of Canteibury. On one point we are in doubt. Docs the law reWire a fresh collar to be put on at every fresh registration ? We must submit a case to our legal advisers on point; because we have a small favorite lap dog, aV,j vvc uave b een fetching in our mind's eye the appearafiw j ie - vi ]j p resent w | iell the last registration at Tima?u\ is con _pi ele . an j the last Government collar

elded on. He will be armed from the tip of the ose to the base of the tail, and will present an appearance which will be worth registering indeed. And all this in consequence of the law being written not in dog Latiu, but what is worse, in dog English. jfow is all this mere nonsense ? Is it a light matter that the laws which we are making for ourselves and our children, should be full from end to end of mistakes which indicate careless indifference as to the result. The result of bad and loose drafting is litigation and loss. We do not say that this Dog law will produce any great evil, but it is a specimen of the style in which the work is being done. In the McLean case the other day one point taken by the counsel was that the Licenses ought to have been signed by the Treasurer instead of the Commissioner. The law was so badly drawn that it was very difficult to decide which signature it should have been. The whole of the property in question might have depended on this one point, and a large estate might have been imperiled by the clumsiness of the bill drafter. It may be thought that we over-rate the importance of these things. We are confident the time will come when it will be proved that we have in no wise over rated the danger. Our colony is nowpassing through an age which will be looked back to as one of strange ignorance of law, and still more strange ignorance of English grammar. We confidently predict that our rulers are vow engaged in sowing broad and deep a crop of future litigation which will one day be reaped to the profit of the profession, and the cost of the public.