ANGLO-COLONIAL NOTES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 12653, 6 September 1904, Page 3

ANGLO-COLONIAL NOTES.

■■ [F3OM .' otjp. OWN CORRESPONDENT.] London, August 6, At Messrs. Sotheby's auction rooms there were offered for sale a few days ago a series of fine and most interesting autograph letters addressed to Mr. Alfred Domett, of Nelson, New Zealand, by Robert Browning, between the years 1840 and 1847, comprising seven letters, .-covering 23 pages quarto and 16 covering 51 pages octavo, dealing with literary and other subjects. These letters realised £150. ! The last mail brought Home copies of ' "Maori Lore," by James Izett. I see from the papers that the book has been very roughly handled by the New Zealand pi ess. All I can do is to give the opinion of those in this country who have devoted attention to this subject and they agree in wholesale condemnation. "It is most unfortunate," writes one eminent authority, " that such a book should have been brought out under Government patronage and, apparently, with Government, approval. The Government— doubt with the best intention has paid for its production with public money. The only atonement it can make for so unfortunate a mistake is to sacrifice a little more money and cancel the. issue altogether." , ! ■ On Friday the Court of Appeal, composed of the Master of the* Rolls and Lords Justices Stirling and Mathew, delivered their reserved judgment in the case of Ruben and Ladenburg versus the Great Fingall Consolidated Company, which came up on the company's appeal from the judgment of Mr. Justice Kennedy in favour of the plaintiffs. The point raised was, briefly, whether the company wa>> liable in respect of a share certificate forged by the late _ secretary, Anthony Stanley Howe, on which he obtained a loan of £20,000 through the plaintiffs. In giving judgment, the Master of the Rolls said he was clearly of opinion that the facts were not sufficient to fix responsibility upon the company, and that the appeal should be allowed. Lords Justices Stirling and Mathcw concurred, and judgment was'entered for the company with costs.

Under the heading, "The Mokau Romance Finis," Truth this week devotes more than fire columns to the Mokau case, its history and its result. Mr. Labouchere remarks: ." Thus ends one of the most extraordinary stories that are to be found in all the records of the law courts. I congratulate Mr. Jones on the attainment of the result for which he has laboured and suffered so long. I respectfully congratulate Mr. Justice. Blgham on having worked out a satisfactory solution of an entanglement which has occupied at different times nearly half the judges on the Bench, and which at. times has seemed almost too complicated to be ever unravelled. I congratulate his counsel, of whom Mr. Lawsou Walton in particular has shown the keenest personal interest in the case, and has twice fought Mr. Jones' battle successfully before the Court. And lastly, I congratulate myself on having contributed in some small way to the result. Mr. Joshua Jones is good enough to tell me that if it had no? been for Truth he would never have won the battle. As a mere man I am bound to tell him that he has a. great many other good and able friends who have given him ..quite as much help as I have. As a journalist, I feel equally bound to record that Truth has at any rate done something, for journalists are unhappily compelled, for business reasons, to blow their trumpets on their own. account occasionally." Mr. Labouchere winds up with a moral as follows: —"A great wrong has' been done to Mr. Jones, for which he gets no compensation. For 11 years he has been deprived of the enjoyment of a property the annual value of which, when its great mineral and other resources are developed, must certainly be measured in thousands of pounds. He had refused an offer of £160,000 for the coal on the property alone before he first came to London. He has lost, -not merely 11 years of this income, but 11 years of life, 11 most precious years, for when he came to London he was a. man over 50 years of age. He has spent those 11 years in the most pitiable circumstances, exiled from his own country, separated from his wife and children, often in acute poverty, subjected often to : cruel indignity, suffering incessantly the torture of hope deferred, fighting single-handed against all the resources of wealth and social influence, with old age ever thawing nearer, and health and strength failing. The machinery of the law has ground many a younger man to death or driven him to insanity in less time. No pecuniary compensation could adequately repay him for all he has lost and suffered. Ho gets—nothing. On the other hand, the eminent, city solicitor whose conduct — judged by the Court in which he was the I servant to have amounted to professional j misconducthas involved his former client in this cruel and protracted wrong, emerges in the end scarcely a penny the worse."