HOW HE BECAME CHIEF JUSTICE.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1553, 7 September 1886, Page 3

HOW HE BECAME CHIEF JUSTICE.

“ Seme men are born for great things,” but it is not often that a man rises to the eminent position of a Chief Justice because the weather was too cold to allow of him being a clerk of petty sessions. Sir James Piendergast, of New Z'aland, started his colonial -career as C.F.S. at Maryborough (Victoria) in the early days, and immediately after his accession the authorities at Melbourne began to he werried by the receipt of sheets of foolscap covered with cuneiform inscriptions and footed by a signature that looked like a light between a spider and a gridiron. At first, little -notice was taken of the matter, it being concluded that the documents were copies of Belshazztr’s washing bill, or ff the kind, which hid gone astray, and they were simply redirected to “ Postoffice, Babylon ; to be left till called for,” and passed on. At length, however, the trouble .became too great for human endurance, and it being discovered that the illegible sorrows in question issued from Maryborough, a commission of enquiry was sent up. They found that Mr Prendercast’s office consisted of an old Government tent pitched on a mud bank, the flooring consisting of one inch of water and three of Irish bog ; and as it was (he depth of winter and bitterly cold

a little ice lent variety to the scene. Inside this cloth m m 'on a benumbed clerk of petty sessions ca- making pot-hooks a, e h »tigers in his official capacity ns a meinh. rof the Civil Service, his st ffened tinge's rendering it impossible to product, any'hme more legib-e, Tbe Commission as, in duty bound, inspected and report'd on the b'ne-nn-eo’ officer, and they did not tike extenuating ejrcuraatances into •ceonnt in those days, and Mr Prendergasl received his dismissal. His eaily ambition being thus nipp.'d in Um bud he took to rhe law for conso'atinn, and is no a. a Chief Justice wi'k a title instead of a bush Dogberry in a leaky tent. His story should point a valuable moral to young men who are nimble io write decently in cold norther. Sydney Bulletin.