HOW HE BECAME CHIEF JUSTICE.

Taranaki Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 7168, 11 September 1886, Page 4

HOW HE BECAME CHIEF JUSTICE.

Tug following ia from the Sydnoy Bulletin : — "Some m/sn aro born for groat things." but it ia not often that a innn rises to the eminent position of a Ch^ef Justice because the weather was to cold to allow of his being a clerk of petty sessions. Sir James Prendergast, of New Zealand,

started hia colonial career bb C.P.S. (Ulerk of Petty Session) at Maryborough (Victoria) in the earlier days, and immediately after his accession the authorities at Melbourne began to be worried by the receipt of sheets of foolscap covered with cuneiform inscriptions and footed by a signature that looked like a fight between a spider and a gridiron. At first, little notico was taken of the matter, it being concluded the documents were copies of BelshazZur's wasbn^ bill, or something of the kind, which had gone astray, and they were simply re-directed to " Post Office, Bub) Ion; to be left till called for," and passed on. At length, however, the irouble became too great for human endurance, and it hiring discovered that the illegible sorrows in question issued from Mar \ borough a commission of itaquiry was sent up. They found that Mr. Premlergabt's office consisted of an old Government tent pitched on a mud bank, the flooiius; consisting of an inch of water ttnd three of liibh bog, und as it was the dopth ot winter ami bitterly cold a little ice k-nt variety of the sceue. Inside this cloth mansion a beau ml ed clerk of petty eess'oris was making pot-hooks and hangera in his official capacity as v member of the Civil Service, his stiffened fingers rendering it impossible to produce anything more legible. The Commission, us in duty bound, inspected ani reported on the blue-nosed officer, but they did not take extenuating circumstances into account tlitfie (ia^s, and Mr. Prendorgust received his diMinssa-i. ll is early ambhion being thus nipped in the bud, he took to the law for eousolutiou, and is now a Chief Ju wv v. llh a title, instead of a bush Du., in a leaky tent. His Btorv should point a valuable moral to youag mm who ure unable to write decently in cola weather."