Lancings SATURDAY, MAY 10, 1913. PUBLIC TRUST OFFICE.

Free Lance, Volume XIII, Issue 671, 10 May 1913, Page 8

Lancings

SATURDAY, MAY 10, 1913. PUBLIC TRUST OFFICE.

M list the Staff be Rescued by the ■ ; .Lawyers ? '

Here shall the Press the People's right maintain Unawed by principle and unbribed by. gain Here patriot Truth her glorious precepts draw, Pledged to Keligion, Liberty, and Law.

f»- HE recently- published- report on ■ J v:the . Public " Trust Office has '■j *' focussed • 'public attention on this '•.admirable institution. The .tacit assertion .is thait the staff is poorly paid and. overworked. On which it is suggested that a good deal more of theoffice's work should be put out to private lawyers. In. this suggestion a big section of the P u blic sees the devil's hoof, and howls prodigiously. The average citizen,, feels, . in a general way. that this department, was established to save poor; human creatures from the lawyer. That - may be an unreasonable feeling; but it is at least excusable. Private lawyers inean increased expense, and prolonged circumlocution. If beneficiaries in ■ any estate' desire to have private .lawyers engaged. it is quite another thing: but-aS a general rule • the Public Trust Office should be self-contained and competent to do its own work. If it is not competent the remedy is obvious. , \' * * But now comes Mr. Jenkinson, M.L.C., to drop a little bomb among the 'lawyers. He prophesies that the State .■must soon establish an office to put through land conveyances and such, transactions for the general public. That prophecy will stir much responsive sentiment in the average man, however much it mav incense the average lawyer. In the whole domain of law State intervention is justified—far more fully Justified than it is in many other domains it ha 6 brought within its soope. This, anyhow,. Is the fact. _If the Public Trust Office is 1 not competent, let it be reorganised and (made competent.- " r Any system of tossing sops to private lawyers must be a botchy improvement at best.