MINING.

Otago Witness, Issue 2009, 25 August 1892, Page 14

MINING.

THE LATE JUDGE BROAD.

The death of District Judge Broad at Nelson removes a figure well known in Otago in the stirripg days of the goldfields, and leaves a vacancy in the rapidly thinning ranks of those to whom the province was indebted for the preservation of law and order at the time when men. of His desertion were particularly valuable. There is no conception possible m these quiet days of the immense responsibilities which theu attached to the office of warden. The goldQelds laws were hastily devised to meet the necessities of the case. The wardens were the sole representatives of justice on the goldfields, and they had no precedents to guide them save such as might bo applicable from Australian experience. At first they were totally destitute of the adjuncts usually considered indispensable. Justice was denuded of all its trappings. The court was probably the locus in quo : the warden's office inertly a tenb, at first without furniture, and with an earthen floor. The position was usually exceptionally difficult. The warden was always almost literally alone. The miners were intent on getting wealth. They cultivated none of the amenities of social life save such as were possible at the " shanty," aud the wardens, who would naturally prefer the exclusiveness which their official position demanded, were thus cast upon their own resources. Of course, as the rushes ceased and the fields assumed a more permanent character, as townships grew up and communication became frequent — it was long ere it became easy, — there grow under the udmiuistration of the wardens, who wore also resident niagiattates, a mass of goldfields law in which they were, of cour.se, facile principles, andjfchey became qualified, no less by experience than by disposition, to arrive at sound and equitable dcci.-ions almost on the spot. A mau with no firmness of character could never succeed as a warden, for while the miners as a whole w re a law-abiding set of men, "their 'respect for the law and their instinctive obedience to the fiat of the warden was always tacitly based ou the understanding that the decision was equitable. In all the qualities which went to make a successful warden Mr Broad was pre-emin-jufc. From a purely professional point of view, also, he has left his mark on the juridical system of the colony, as he einbjdied his great experience in a number of legal books which havebeeu proved to be of considerable value. Such men as Judge Broad can ill be spared.