The Lyttelton Times.

Lyttelton Times, Volume II, Issue 85, 21 August 1852, Page 6

The Lyttelton Times.

August 2l, 1852. " No rightly minded man can read the report of the recent proceedings in the Supreme Court at Wellington, of which we give an abridgement to-day, without a feeling of deep concern. There is something extremely painful in witnessing the collision between different principles or authorities, both of which, it is most necessary, should be upheld, and one of which is sure to be damaged in the conflict. In the present case the parties to the struggle are the authority of the Judge of the Supreme Court and the liberty of the press. The story is briefly as follows :—Several Jurors of Wellington are fined for non-attendance when summoned on a Jury; some of these fines are remitted, whilst one ■ is enforced. The sufferer writes a letter to the Wellington Independent accusing the Judge of partiality, in having remitted some of the fines, and enforced his. He is summoned, together with the publisher of the newspaper, to appear before the Judge for contempt of Court. Being advised by his legal adviser not to reply to the interrogatories of tne Court, he is committed to prison foiv contempt ; the publisher is required to enter into recognizances for his good behaviour in future, and the Solicitor who advised his client not to reply to the Court, is fined £20. The defence set up by the legal gentlemen who appeared for the defendants, comprised several technical objections, upon which we cannot venture an opinion, further than to remark, that to ignorant bystanders who have nothing but a com-

mon sense of justice and propriety to guide their judgment, a very painful doubt remains as to the legality, or at all events, the formality of the whole proceeding. But there was one point immediately interesting to ourselves, in common with all the public journalists of this colony. It was argued by Counsel that no contempt of Court had taken place in the publication of the letter, for as much as the transaction to which it referred had altogether terminated, and was not one pending before the Court at the time—that the power of the Court to punish for contempt, can only be exercised for the purpose of defending- its present authority, and of securing the independent of justice ; and that its jurisdiction cannot be lawfully stretched to inflict punishment upon those who may feel it their duty to animadvert upon proceedings which have been altogether disposed of, and have become matters of history.

Now what the strict letter of the law may be, we do not care to enquire; whether by a tortuous construction or an extreme interpretation of ancient prerogative, the Judge may have been borne out in his assumption of this strange authority, is a question of no moment. There is a far more important principle at stake—the principle of the liberty of the press, and, through it, of the liberty of the people. If it be within the power of the Judge to punish any attack upon his administration of justice, by an arbitary exercise of his own authority, and without recurring to the ordinary form of a trial at law, where is the limit to such a power ? Up to what period may it be exercised? What is to prevent the events of months or years gone by-being made the occasion of inflicting punishment ? "What is the guarantee that it shall not be made subservient to base ends —that it shall not be put in force at the instigation of private malice, or to gratify private revenge ? Are we to be told that the. conduct of the Judge is to be free from the strictures of the public voice ? To what will such a doctrine lead ? Try it by an extreme case. Suppose for a moment that Mr. Robinson's accusation had been just. Suppose that the Judge had been guilty of gross partiality in the discharge of his duty. Shall we be told that we are to maintain a terrified and ignominious silence ? Shall we be told that there exists any authority whatever in a free country, armed with such terrible powers of vengeance, as to quell the murmurs of an indignant people ?—that no voice can ever be raised to expose the corruption,or to chastise the insolence of men .in power ? We have not so learned the duties of a public journalist. It is his duty and prerogative to give free and full utterance to the mind of the people. That he shall be unshackled in his performance of this duty, has been decreed by a Jpower superior to all Judges and to all law—the collective wisdom and will of a people. It is in truth, in these days, a hopeless task to go to war with the press. No judge armed with all the powers and terrors of Westminster Hall, has ever yet been able to crush a journal supported by the public. But the press, has, more than "once in our day, hunted an unjust Judge from the Bench.

Shall then there be no remedy against a licentious press ? Yes—in the known and accustomed forms of law, not in the desultory impulses of an arbitrary power. A licentious press is scarcely so great an evil in these days as an enslaved one; but, tyrannical Government is at least as likely to produce the one as the other. We do not imply that, in the present case, the strictures of the press were just or called for—we do not for a moment justify Mr. Robinson's ill-judged letter. But if that publication contained a defamatory libel, it should have been punished by the ordinary process of law, not by the arbitrary power of the Judge. Let it not be supposed that we would for a moment detract from the authority of that august functionary. To maintain the dignity and independence of the Supreme Court of Justice in the land, is the part of every wise and loyal man. It is the peculiar pride and boast of England, that a reverence for law, a respect for those entrusted with its administration, and a confidence in its ultimate justice, are feelings deeply seated in the minds of the people. A public journalist who would endeavour to shake those convictions, would not only degrade his office, but would forfeit the support of the community upon whose approbation alone his existence depends. But the dignity of the Bench is not incompatible with the liberty of the press,—nay, if it can only be maintained by enforcing silence on the public organs, it is degradation, not dignity. We have felt it our duty to make this protest against the recent proceedings in the Court at Wellington. And, in no bombastic spirit of defiance ; but rather with a strong sense of the difficulty and danger which beset our path in such a struggle, we think it right to declare that we shall not be deterred by any terrors of the law from chastising any Judge, if our duty call us to do so. Judge Stephen has already come before the public in no very enviable light. He has entered upon public duties, as the successor of one under whose administration the law was respected, and its highest office esteemed. He has a noble task, a high position, great responsibility : for, in a new country, how much of the future stability of the law, and its hold upon the hearts of the people, without which all law is rubbish—how much depends upon the conduct of those by whom it is administered in early and unsettled times ! But dignity is not maintained by passion or petulance ; and the law is not recommended to the people by the enforcement and application of maxims which every sensible man feels to be unjust. Judge Steven has already done more to shake public confidence inhis decisions than years of prudence and painstaking will restore.