JUDGE WILLIAMS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26027, 15 December 1945, Page 3

JUDGE WILLIAMS

MR DOWNIE STEWART'S PORTRAIT Reviewed by “Lex.”* Portrait of a Judge: Sir Joshua Williams, P.C. By W. Downie Stewart (Whltcombe and Tombs). 7s 6d. The best recipe for longevity is, we are told, a wise choice of parents, and the appeal of a biography begins with a wise choice of the subject. Thus Mr Downie Stewart, in making the great figure of Sir Joshua Williams live again in his charming and sympathetic pages, succeeds from the first words of his preface. It is indeed fortunate that one who knew Sir Joshua so well, alike in his court and in his private life, should have delineated him for our pleasure, and most of all for our instruction. For this was a very great man, by universal consent the model of a judge and the perfect pattern of a great gentleman. Mr Justice Williams presided over what was then the leading bar of a young country for what was, fortunately for it, a long life, and it may be difficult for our generation to give full weight to the part he played in establishing the high tradition of our judiciary and, more important still, in giving our citizens the confidence in, the justice, impartiality and integrity of their, courts that is the very foundation of our system of justice. That such a man should have been found in the earliest days of this province and this country was more fortunate than we may realise until we read Mr Stewart’s pages. His triumph was one of character even more than of attainments, however great, and the author has wisely insisted what might well have been a temptation, to dwell overlong on the legal side of Sir Joshua’s life, on the details of the cases he heard, and on the outstanding and memorable judgments that he delivered. For, after all, the law is a stage on which the plays change even more rapidly than do the actors, who have ever to learn new parts and forget old ones. It is a quaint conceit to imagine such masters of our language as the translators_ of the Bible reading the leading article of a modern newspaper, the pages of The Economist, or an account of Alamein. In a minor way, but in the short space of 30 years, Mr Justice Williams and his bar would find little familiar in a modern law report. But the character and personality of a great judge will ever command our interest and respect, and no character in our own short history more justly commands it than does his. What was it in Sir Joshua that has left his name regarded with little short of idolatry, alike in his profession and in popular esteem? Mr Stewart has most felicitously asked this question in the first words of his memoir, and even more felicitously answered it: What was the secret of the esteem, affection and veneration in which this great man Was held, not only by the legal profession, but by all his fellow citizens, both rich and poor? It was not so much his learning -as a judge and his fine scholastic attainments, as his exquisite and gracious courtesy to young and old, his unraffled serenity and dignity, his patience with young practitioners and nervous witnesses, his compassion for the poor, and his willing participation in those duties of citizenship which did not conflict with t his judicial work. It is our privilege, in this charming memoir, to have a great man brought once more as it were into the very streets where his was for so many

years so familiar and beloved a figure, to meet again a gracious personality, and to leave him with heightened admiration and affection. It will indeed be our fault and our misfortune if we can read Mr Stewart's memoir without the happiness of renewing so memorable an acquaintance, and still more without feeling the inspiration of a life so uniquely distinguished, not only by great attainments, but by the most faultlesss kindness and courtesy to every member of the community he served so well. We owe a debt of gratitude to Mr Downie Stewart for his delightful book. It is perhaps not too much to say that only he could to-day have written it, and certainly not too much that no one can read it without pleasure and inspiration.