‘REAL DISSERVICE’

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20625, 28 November 1941, Page 7

‘REAL DISSERVICE’

CLERICAL CRITICS ANTAGONISM TO LAW MAN-POWER TRIBUNALS (Per Press Association.) WELLINGTON, this day. “We find an attack on tbe even flow of justice made, I am sorry to say, by certain ministers of religion. It is becoming only too evident that there are some religionists who are doing a real disservice both to their denominations and the State by fostering a spirit of antagonism to the civil law,” said Dr. 0. C. Mazengarb, addressing Justices of the Peace at the association’s luncheon to-day.

There was no real conflict between Divine and civil law, he said. Conflict only arose when people sought to interpret the unrevealed law of God in a way which conflicted with our duties as citizens of the world. Even when such a conflict occurred, the obvious course, surely, was to ask the Legislature to amend the law so as to bring it into harmony with the presumed will of God. Unless churchmen confined themselves to their true province, they might easily bring about a situation they might live to regret. Any movement that whiteanted the law was quite capable of white-anting the church itself. That had already happened in Europe. Personally, he did not regard the man-power tribunals with favour. He said there was a simpler and more kindly way of dealing fairly with men who did not want to fight. The press reports of the proceedings showed that there was an urgent need for a change in the law, but while the law, was there these clerical critics should respect it and not criticise the tribunals, which had the unpleasant duty of endeavouring to penetrate into the real minds of men. Interference With Justice Orders-in-Council and Ministerial interference with the course of justice were also the subject of comment by the speaker, who said that students of history should be able to see an almost complete constitutional parallel between the wrongs of the Stuart period and the evils now becoming manifest in modern democracy. Proclamations, licensing of monopolies, irregular tribunals and interference with the course of justice all had their counterpart to-day. It was becoming the fashion for Crown Ministers to issue their own interpretation of regulations in the form of press statements, broadcast talks, and Government pamphlets. The work of the legislator was to make the law, and not to interpret it. If the laws were wrong, change them by all means, but so long as the law was there, let it be administered without fear or favour lest public confidence in the administration of justice be sadly diminished.

Dr. Mazengarb also said there was a growing tendency in Parliament to oust the jurisdiction of the people’s courts by the setting up of irregular tribunals from which the only right of appeal was to the Minister himself, like Caesar, be they instances of the Transport Act and the Industrial Efficiency Act. Under that bureaucratic system anything could be done behind closed doors, and the Minister could still protect himself by sheltering behind the official he appointed to make a report.