POLITICAL INTERFERENCE

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LX, Issue LX, 1 November 1910, Page 5

POLITICAL INTERFERENCE

GRAVE INDICTMENT FROM THE BENCH. "TO BRING THEM UNDER THE WHIP." i BY TELEGRAPH— PRESS ASSOCIATION. AUCKLAND, O«fc. 81. Some strong comments were passed on our judicial system, as relating to maistrates, by Mr H. W. Northcroft, S.M., this afternoon, when a presentation was made to him on his retirement from the Magisterial bench. "Our magistrates are not independent," said Mr Northcroft. "They are subject too muph to political interference." He went on to say that this constituted a grave danger to that fairness and impartiality with which a magistrate ought to carry out his work. "Magistrates," he continued, "bad industrial and other disputes brought before them o,utside their usual judicial work, and a constant endeavor was made from influential sources to biing them under the whip." In concluding, Mr Northcroft said it was the duty of citizen in this young Dominion, while there was yet time ? to move in the matter of making magistrates as independent as Supreme Court judges.