SUPREME COURT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume II, Issue 346, 21 December 1864, Page 5

SUPREME COURT.

(Before his Honor Sir G. Arney.) SITTIXGS IX BjUTKHITTCY.

The Court s:vt yesterday, but owing to the following circumstance we omit to give any report of the proceeding. The reporters were seated at the table which is usually occupied l>y folicitora and ivere engaged in their ordinary denies, when llr. Merriman called the attention of the Court to the fact that ihey had no right there. '1 here was no accommodation whatever provided for the Press. Mr. Merriman further

said that the reporters were intruders and that " he was not afi-aid to bell the cat." His Honor concurred in the remarks of Mr, Merriruan as to the reporters liavii'g no right at the solicitors' table. CI he reporters were then placed in a somewhat awkward position. Called intruders openly they could not remain where they were, and there being no accommodation whatever, their want of humility did not permit them to sit upon ihe floor. They took the only course allowed them and left the Court in a body. It is high time that something should be done by

the authorities to provide accommodation for persons who are in t!ig widest sense the representatives and servants of the public 110 less than the officers of •justice themselves. Jn London the position of a reporter is acknowledged, and persons in the highest authority do not do not disdain to accommodate him with a chair or table in their midst. A reporter who is competent to the duties devolving upon him is necessarily a man of education and may very properly demand the same acknowledgment in the colonics which is accorded to him on all sides in England. He will not sit in publicplaces to be insulted, seeing that ho cannot answer anything that may be said, or take notice of the impertinent vulgarity that taunts him with an inferiority which does not exist. In the old Supreme Court-house the reporters always sat at the same table with the gentlemen of the bar ; they did so till lately at the Police Court, and wc think that Mr. Merriman would have shown both good sense and gentlemanly courtesy hud he first seen that suitable accommodation elsewhere was provided for the Press, before he objected to their presence at. the only place they could possibly occupy in the Court.