INCONSISTENCY.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 13710, 18 April 1910, Page 6

INCONSISTENCY.

The action of Mr G. P. Wake, an Eftham lawyer, in protesting the other day against the temporary re-appoint-ment of aged retired mag-strates, ha* been the s-Übject of some discnssicui and criticism. Whether or not Mr Wako took the best course, in sr/eakins to the temporary magistrate as he did, is a matter on which there may be two opinions. Mr Wake spoke with deference and respect, bnt it was a difficult matter to refer to the age of a magistrate as a reason for desiring an ad-<. jotirnment of a case, without hurting the magistrate's feelings and laying the speaker open to a charge of discourtesy. In no sense, however, could his remarks be construed into an attack upon the old gentleman who was sitting on the Bench at the time. It was the principle adopted by tho Government of appointing aged magistrates, who have passed into retirement, to temporary positions thai Mr Wake criticised, and it was unfortunate that this protest shonld necessarily appear to have a particular, when it was meant to have a general, application. Tho Government's action dn this matter certainly appears strangely inconsistent with its decision, expressed in the Public Service Superannuation Act, that every public servant must retire from the service at the ag& of sixty-five. We do not need to go beyond Canterbury for a case in which a ma-gjstrate of singular efficiency was compelled nnder this regulation to retire into v private life at this age, when ■as capable of fulfilling the duties of his jHjsitian as he had ever been. If, however, it is deemed necessary in. tho public interest to require the retirement at that age jf magistrates fully abreast of law and practice, it is surely wrong, to reappoint to the magistracy, as in the Eltham. case r a man of 82, who has presumably been out of harness- for seventeen years. The fact that this is the third time within s year that a retired magistrate has been appointed to act in thafc district strengthens the argument, now embodied in a requisition to tho Minister of Justice, that a permanent relieving magistrate ought to he appointed, to take over the duties of magistrates who may bo ill or absent on leave, or to fill the vacancy caused by the death of a magistrate until a new appointment is made We are chary of suggesting any increased expenditure in the public but this seems a case in which the expenditure of a few hundred pounds annually would be justified ia the public interest.