THE HERALD ON JUDGE GILLIES.

New Zealand Times, Volume XL, Issue 6820, 28 February 1883, Page 2

THE HERALD ON JUDGE GILLIES.

(from our own correspondent.) AocKtiVND, February 27.

The Herald, referring t > Ju ige Gillies’ letter to Mr James Russell as chairman of the meeting of members of the legal profession, says:— “ The position taken up by Mr Qjllies has been questioned both by the Bar and the Press. The newspapers which have written on the subject have been as calm, and fair, and judicial, and respectful as it was possible to be. They have said not oce whit more than have the lawyers, and yet Mr Gillies, for some reason which we cannot imagine, m ikes a marked distinction in motives which he conceives to actuate members of the Bar and writers in the public Press. We do not know whether Mr Gillies will continue the controversy he has so rashly commenced, but if he does, perhaps he will explain why he makes such a distinction'. Personal feelings might actuate some of the members of the Bar, but the majority of writers in the Press know nothing of Mr Gillies beyond seeing bis name in the papers as a Judge of the Supreme Court at Auckland. Referring to what he most unjustly called the ‘ malignant representation of my conduct as a Judge,’ Justice Gill es says: ‘I disdain to reply, knowing well how little thinking men aie influenced by such cowardly attacks from behind the hedge of journalistic anonymity.’ Now, the articles complained of appeared as leading articles, which are always anonymous. Mr Gillies cannot imagine that when articles are written about him they must be signed, and that he his the right to denounce them as ‘ cowardly 1 when they are not signed. As to their being ‘ cowardly,’ the application of such an epithet is simply absurd. We are quite sure that the writer of each of these articles would be quite ready to say to Mr Gillies' face all that he has written. Mr Gillies’ words and their meaning were too clear for any possibility of misconstruction, and surely members of the legal profession are not so stupid as to have a ‘ malevolent misconstnction ’ which the words could not fairly bear, forced upon them by the newspapers. We regret that all the leading newspapers in New Zealand wrote on the subject, and all in the same tone and argument, aod it is not possible to think that everynewspaperia animated by ‘ malignant ’ feelings towards Justice Gillies. None of the articles that we have seen have borne

any traces of being inspired by such a sentiment, and for ourselves we emphatically disclaim it. A word as to ‘ standard of honor,’ which Mr Gillies thinks ‘it becomes peon--I'ar’r h ■ duty of judges to endeavor to maint*. i..‘ it-cause ‘iu a colony like this we have no. 3c- a highly educated aud cultivated public opinion developed as in the Home country.’ We doubt whether ‘the standard of honor’ is so degraded here in comparison with the Home country as Mr Gillies supposes, but whatever the judges, with Mr Gillies at their head, may do in the future towards raising it by the loftiness of their public and private characters, we do not think they have done anything very conspicuous in the past.”