237

A.—4

12 June, 1911.] Imperial Appeal Court. [Ith Day. Sir JOSEPH WARD— cont. as New Zealand is concerned, I believe that there should be no such thing as a final appeal court in our country —I am not attempting to have a final appeal court in New Zealand at all, for good and sufficient reasons in my opinion, our final appeals should be sent to the Home authorities —the Privy Council —in the absence of a merger with the House of Lords. I suggest this alteration, namely, the trial of our own cases with one of our own judges as a member of the tribunal, in order to meet what is a strong feeling in New Zealand which has been felt for some years past. On the question of the expense, I think it would be incomparably better from a New Zealand standpoint that we should pay our own judge a proper salary, and his expenses while here. Considering the many hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of property involved in the cases which will have to come to the Privy Council in future in connection with the class of property and the section of the community I have mentioned, the question of the expense is a secondary point when you consider the enormous interests involved. Moreover, as far as New Zealand is concerned, we should hail with supreme satisfaction, in dealing with all the oversea cases referred for appeal to the Privy Council, the idea of a judge from each of the other Dominions referred to sitting to hear a New Zealand case, because there is no reason why any of the New Zealand representatives should have any fear about the judges from other Dominions outside the particular one they represent taking part with the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in deciding cases affecting their country. As far as New Zealand is concerned, I should not object to that for one moment. On higher grounds, I believe myself that the judges from the respective countries, if they were here, would do an immense amount of good in the direction of bringing our countries still closer and closer together. If we had men occupying such high judicial positions, I should assume that an Imperial link, through the judiciary, would be formed, and, by the process of assimilation of the law, where it was possible to do so, they would by degrees do an immense amount of good to all portions of the British Empire. As far as I am concerned, I concede at once that the suggestion the Lord Chancellor has made, that a judge of our Supreme Court should come here, perhaps once a year, our cases being held over to enable him to hear them, would , in practice, be unworkable from our point of view ; and, moreover, I am inclined to think it would not meet with the approval in New Zealand while a wider and broader scheme certainly w T ould. I should be glad if my colleague, Dr. Findlay, would speak upon the matter. Dr. FINDLAY : I will only add a few words to supplement what has been said by Sir Joseph Ward. This matter presents itself to us in the double aspect of form and substance. There can be no doubt that in New Zealand, and, I apprehend in Australia, it would satisfy a growing sentiment if one final Imperial Court of Appeal were established. No doubt that is largely a matter of sentiment, and probably, as the Lord Chancellor has explained, the personnel of that court would differ very little, if at all, from the personnel of the present Privy Council, but it would seem to the different outlying parts of the Empire a step towards closer unity if there were His Majesty's Imperial Court of Final Appeal to which people both of the United Kingdom and of the self-governing oversea Dominions and the Crown Colonies came as a final tribunal. I understood from the Lord Chancellor that although that does not seem to be immediately practicable it is not altogether entirely out of his horizon. The other branch of this matter is one of substance. There can be no doubt that while there never has been the faintest suggestion that the Privy Council has been wanting either in patience, or in knowledge, or in legal attainment, there can be also no doubt that on various occasions they have entirely misintrepreted certain branches of the law of New Zealand. It may seem somewhat presumptuous to make that statement, but that, at least, is the view of the legal profession of New Zealand and the judges. The difficulty of removing that defect, of course, is great, and the view suggested by Sir Joseph Ward that one of our judges, for instance, should be resident in London for a period of from five to seven years would have more than one advantage. First, it would obviate our sending home, as we do now so freely,