New Zealand Times. (PUBLISHED DAILY.) FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 24.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 4891, 24 November 1876, Page 2

New Zealand Times. (PUBLISHED DAILY.) FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 24.

A spectacle of some of the. peculiarities of the English mode of administering justice was presented at the Wellington Resident Magistrate’s Court • yesterday. Of late there has been frequent comment as to the lengths to which the practice of our Courts permits a barrister to go in cross-examining a witness. It is not too much to say that' many professional gentlemen have a habit of at once assuming with any hostile witness a tone which infers that the witness is not one of truth, and that by proceeding from brow-beating and badgering to absolute expressions of opinion as to the witness’s honesty and probity, they endeavor (perhaps not intentionally) to, convince the Bench or the jury that there is in the witnessbox one whoso proper situation would be in, the dock. Now, whilst for the purposes of justice it is absolutely necessary that very.great latitude should be allowed to a barrister whilst cross-examining, it is equally true that ■ the administration of justice should not permit a paid advocate to constitute himself the public judge of the truth, or untruth of any witness. _ A lawyer in a case is by a pleasant fiction supposed to be simply interested, in getting at all the facts in order that justice may be ultimately done, and therefore he has every right (though as a matter of fact, ho is a mere partizan) to search and try a witness’s credibility and honesty

by every fair means. But it is most repugnant to justice that because a witness is called to give evidence against a client ■therefore the advocate of that client should be permitted, by look, by tone, by gesture, and by absolute, in fact, by forensic pantomime and by forensic utterance, to endeavor to convey the opinion that the person he is cross-examining is simply a perjurer. It is for the Bench and the jury to pronounce by their decisions a verdict on that point, and it is for the barrister, by fair and pertinent interrogatory, to endeavor to break down the evidence -which - tells against his client. Bui unfortunately the practice of, our Courts tends very much towards the absolute sanctioning of a system the exact reverse of this. No one who has been at the trial of cases, either as a witness or as a spectator, but has frequently seen ’ the spectacle of some thoroughly honest man literally badgered by some person (by Act of, Parliament a gentleman) into such a condition that he scarcely knows what he is saying, and finds himself when the ordeal is over to have unconsciously contradicted himself fifty times. Dickens, Trollope, and many a novelist whose descriptions have been founded on actual life, have written trenchantly on this state of things, but it still goes on, and like Tennyson’s brook, shows symptoms of “ going on for ever.” Occasionally the legal gentleman meets his match in some witness quite competent to exchange rhetorical thrust and parry with him, when he is the very first to ask the protection of . the Court against the insulting behaviour of the witness, and to give warning that no intimidation or levity will prevent him from doing his duty to his client. But these exceptions are so rare that they only prove the rule—a rule against which it is high time that some stand was made. In the Resident Magistrate’s Court yesterday, Mr. Barton deliberately called a witness “a scoundrel.” Now, a witness may. or may not be worthy of that epithet, but until he is publicly convicted of some offence the law very properly protects him against being so addressed. Nay, even were he convicted the law still leaves him a remedy against anyone using language towards him calculated to provoke a breach of the peace. That is to say, the law is, as we have stated, in every situation but that which comes immediately under her nose. In her own temple it seems that it is quite competent for one of her assistant priests to address a man in language for which, if he used it outside the door, he might be subject either to the penalty imposed by her, or to a prompt administration of justice by means of the fist or the boottoe. In the present case'we are not writing of Mr. Barton as an individual, but simply as having yesterday furnished an example of a practice to which great objections arise. His ability is of a very high order, his professional standing is beyond dispute, and whatever he does we are sure he does in the interests of his client. But it unfortunately happens that he and his legal brethren are far too fond of doing in the interests of their clients, or of justice perhaps, things which are most repugnant to anyone who wishes to see justice administered in a decent and proper manner.