The Poverty Bay Herald AND East Coast News Letter. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. Monday, September 22, 1879.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VI, Issue 900, 22 September 1879, Page 2

The Poverty Bay Herald AND East Coast News Letter. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. Monday, September 22, 1879.

Some articles which have appeared m the North American Review, from the pen of Mr Thomas Hughes, M.P., on the subject of the public schools of England, have laid by no means undue stress tipon the important services those institutions' have rendered to the nation by the training and discipline of a race of statesmen. Those schools, it is urged, have given to the youth of England " their capacity to govern others and control themselves, their aptitude for combining freedom with order, their public spirit, their vigour and manliness of character, their strong but not slavish respect for public opinion, and their healthy love of exercise." This being so he. endeavours to impress upon the minds of his readers m America the necessity of. founding similar institutions there, m order that a properly qualified governing class may be formed ; for, ,as he observes, " America as well as England must have a gentry, an aristocracy — call it by what name you please. This is a step which must be taken m the march of society." And he quotes the dictum of Emerson, the wisest of American thinkers that " a race yields a nobility m some form, however, we name the lords, as surely as it yields women." Admitting this undeniable truth, Mi*. Hughes goes on to show that it thus " becomes the duty of all good citizens to consider how the class can be trained so that they may be as helpful as possible to the nation." A governing body it must have, and that body should be. composed of men of highly cultivated minds, of pure morals, and "of refined and courteous manners. ■ It is the misfortune of New Zealand that it has few legislators possessing these necessaiy qualities. Late events ought to convince every well-wisher

of his country of the paramount importance of taking some steps to secure the exclusion from public life of the political adventurer class, and to obtain for the State the services of a body of properly qualified and efficently trained men. "We think," writes a contemporary dilating upon this most important subject, " it must strike every one, on reflection, as a most shocking anomaly that, while we impose a Civil Service examination upon applicants for employment m the public service ; while we insist upon ministers of religion, physicians and surgeons, attorneys and barristers, and school-teachers, undergoing a special course of instruction, and proving their pi'oficiency m" certain branches of knowledge, we demand no proof whatever of mental or moral fitness from those to* whom we confide the responsible duty of making our laws, administering our finances, and conducting the government of the country. Statesmanship, if not the highest, is certainly one of the most difficult of human sciences. Those who have excelled m it at home have been men of conspicuous ability and the highest culture, and not unfrequenily of great natural genius. The lessons we have learned from the past should no longer be overlooked. If it be possible we should endeavor to establish a school of trained statesmen, and that either by statute, or by the action of the constituencies, we should insist upon mental qualifications on the part of candidates, many of whom are so impatient as they are incompetent to exercise legislative functions. Descending from the remarks applied to our higher legislation, we have men elevated to the Magisterial Bench who are utterly incompetent to fulfil m a proper manner their responsibilities. Of hundreds of Justices of the Peace on the roll, how many of them who do not possess the ordinary education of a tolerably advanced School-boy 1 Again, how the cause of education is being retarded by the meddling interference and the ignoi*ance displayed by many of the School Committees scattered throughout the colony who arrogate to themselves the right to instruct trained Inspectors and Schoolmasters m matters of which Committees are altogether ignorant. It would be instructive if the 'Commissioner of Education would get together a collection of letters addressed to the School Boards by School Committees. Here would be found such a mixture of bad spelling, bad grammar ; ignorance, folly, narrowminedness and small prejudices as cannot but be a great source of grief to all men and women of reflection and intelligence.

Not being lawyers we do not quite un--1 derstand the ins and outs of the judgment 'm the case Tucker v. Read's Trustees, referred to by our correspondent " J ustice. " We thought that the District Court could adjudge an equitable as well as legal claims, and the 15th clause of the District Courts Act, 1858, clearly gives that power it may perhaps be within the Judge's discretion to exercise his equitable powers only on occasions. The case Beuius to us a very peculiar one. It would appear from the evidence of Mr. Lawrence and the plaintiff, and from the account books produced, that the grantee under whom the plaintiff claimed had received £44 2s. only, the last payment having been m 1871. This would leave a balance of about £80. Then arises the question whether the six years « f the Statute of Limitations during which only debt can be recovered, bar the present claim. It certainly seems most unfair that a debt which is so clearly due should be met m such a manner, the more especially since it must tend to so greatly augment the causes of complaint alleged by the Native vendors. But what is yet more surprising is, that the plaintiff's counsel should have been able to quote so many cases to prove that his view was the correct one, viz., : that unpaid purchase money was a lien on the land, which by the 40th section of the Act, was not barred for Iwenty years, and that the counsel on the other side should have been able to cite more authorities apparently to the country ; for he certainly put forward many more books m support of his defence." Nevertheless, we should have preferred seeing the case decided on its merits, and according to the equity. The law, as at pre3ent administered, offers too many loopholes through technicalities for a defendant to withstand the payment of a just claim by pleading the Statute of Limitation, or the Tippling Act, or something of a like nature. There is another feature m this case which rather confuses us. It is this : the plaintiff applied for a nonsuit but it was refused. We were of the .impression that the plaintiff might any time before the delivery of judgment elect to take a nonsuit, which is practically withdrawing a claim for the time being, and since such evident grounds for an action were disclosed, it might with the severest propriety have been granted m the presentcase, if only to allow the plaintiff to endeavor to obtain justice elsewhere. A plaint if very often fails through some little unforseen circumstance, or perhaps he thinks that because a thing is plain to his mind, that it will also be plain to the mind of the judge before whom he is going ; or perhaps, knowing a thing to be true himself he takes very lit tie trouble ab'»ut provinsj it past all doubt ; such a case may have been the present, the plaintiff probably of his own knowledge knew his facts to be true, and that they would not be disputed, and consequently thought it unnecessary to prove that which was not denied, but even admitted. Therefore, under all these circumstances, there seems to have baen some miscarriage of. justice m that judgment, which went for defendant with costs, when really it appears to an unprejucided mind that the exigencie of the case would have met (if a judgment could not have been given for the plaintiff) to have recotded a non-suit.