PAYING JUDGES

Otago Witness, Issue 2408, 26 April 1900, Page 40

PAYING JUDGES

Something can be said for and something against th.3 proposal of one of the West Coast clubs to make the judge a salaried officer. For there is a sense of fairness in the idea of giving a judge an allowance to meet his personal expenses, so that ho need not be out of pocket in" serving his club ; and then, again, by attaching a salary to the office it prevents the eligible impecunious man from being at a disadvantage when a club is looking round for someone to do the work. Moreover, there should not be any such thing as looking down on a person for accepting pay. This notion is utterly foreign to our arrangements in the colonies, where everybody who is anything has to work for his living. At the Fame time, while giving these considerations their full vr.kie, I am afraid that the paying of judges might, not work altogether satisfactorily. While we all .profess to respect labour, and to admire the doctrines that make for equality, there exists at higher or lower levels in our minds an idea that the man who ban afford to serve without reward is more independent than the one who gets a salary. The idea may be faulty, but if it is there, and is apt to make itself felt occasionally, it might be unsafe to disiegard it. The judge must be above suspicion. We cannot afford to let it be imagined for an instant that he is under the influence of those who vote him his salary, or fiat he is answerable to anybody. Those who argue for paying the judge may retort that the tame objection holds good in the caie of the handicapper and the secretary — two ofticas that are almost invariably paid for; but my reply to that remark is -that the judge's duties do not take very much of his time,, wherefore there is the less need for remuneration, and, more important, while the handicapper and secretary are purely executive officers, the judge must be absolutely independent and unaparoaohable. If it would not bring the judge down from his pedestal. "I see no strong reason why he should not be paid, but there is. it seems to me, a danger that if ho is voted a few guineas for his services he may be regarded as only one of the officers of tho club, and not exempt from the elbowing and the bullying and the cajolery which the ordinary officers have to put up with. Such a state cl things would be most unfortunate. The subject is one that I do not profest, to hold any very strong or fixed opinions about. I nipke these representations with a view to discussion rather than for tho purpose of dogmatising. After all, the question of jpay or no pay depends very much on the circumstances of each particular case, and if, to secure the service i of a really first-class man, a club had to vote him a salary, I should consider the vote quite justified.