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THE HONGKONG GOVERNMENT GAZETTE, 28TH AUGUST, 1880.
The first want, in the estimation of the Commissioners (see 3rd Recommendation), is the appoint- ment of an Accountant, who should, as such, relieve the Registrar of all matters which involve accounts or purely administrative management of property. The appointment of such an officer and the handing over to him of the work suggested by the Commissioners, would at once relieve the Registrar of halt. or probably more than half, f his present duties.
We think that the entire responsibility for the accounts of the Court, and for the receipt and ment of money, should rest on the Accountant so appointed.
pay.
We ask that Mr. BARFF be at once relieved of all duties as Deputy Registrar, which he does not at all understand, and that he should be provisionally appointed Accountant, and have appropriatel to him all the duties now assigned to the Registrar which involve the keeping of accounts and the business management of property. He should have for this purpose all the powers of the Registrar. but should be entirely under the supervision of the Registrar, who, once a week, at least, should examine and check Mr. BARFF'S accounts.
We ask that once a month the Auditor General "should personally," and not by any subordinate officer (see Report, p. 9), audit the accounts in the most searching manner and pass and sign them.
The Commissioners appear to think that no money should be actually received or paid at the office. All fees can well be paid by stamps according to the 12th Recommendation. Monies received and paid in the original Jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, being very rarely small amounts, may well be provided for by cheques, receipt papers and counterfoils, but there may possibly be difficulty in carrying out the system in its entirety in respect of the small sums paid into and out of the Court in its Summary Jurisdiction.
We, however, understand that the Commissioners and the Colonial Secretary can, both, devise practicable schemes for carrying out the proposed plan in its entirety, which we should be glad to sev successful.
We think that the Accountant temporarily appointed should, under the direction of the Auditor General, at once inaugurate this system. If this were done, the ability of the temporarily appointed officer would, as to this department of his duties, be at once tested.
But the most serious want of the Court and of the Judges is, that two Deputy Registrars, accord- ing to the 8th Recommendation of the Commissioners, should be appointed without any delay. Of course, we ask only for provisional and temporary appointments in the first instance.
It now occasionally happens that Mr. PLUNKET and Mr. BARFF are both absent at the same time. and that, when two Courts are sitting. The result is, that neither Court can continue to sit in the absence of a Registrar, who is necessarily an integral part of the Court to such an extent that he alone is by the Code authorized to record the Decree of the Court. His Minute is made by the Code, Section XLVII, §5, the Decree.
Mr. BARFF has no legal training, and he can give the Court no aid. On the contrary, he falls into errors in recording the decisions of the Court, errors which, by the Code, are irremediable except by the expensive process of a rehearing.
No person entirely fitted to be Deputy Registrar is to be procured. Judges have not the in- formation required. They rely on officers trained to the knowledge. How entirely Lord Chief Justice MANSFIELD relied on the officers of the Court, appears from a passage in R. v. Joйs WILKS, Esquire. 4 Barrow's Reports, 25-66, which we have extracted and annex.
ANNEX.
"Matters of Practice are not to be known from Books. What passes at a Judge's Chambers is "matter of Tradition : It rests in memory. In cases of this kind Judges must inquire of their officer. "This is done in Court every day when the Practice is disputed or doubted. It is, in its nature, official, "The officers are better acquainted with it than the Judges. For his own part, neither his education not his Walk in life before he came into this Court, ever led him into any knowledge of the Practice "of orders made by Judges in the vacation. The making this order for the amendment appeared to him to be right, and to be a matter of course. It came to him as a matter of course and recommended as "such from a gentleman of great experience, who (he knew) would as soon have cut off his right han! as have deceived him by representing this as a thing of course, when it was not so. Accordingly le "issued as Summons," &c.
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And if that grand Judge so entirely needed the aid of officers of great experience, he being con fined to one branch of the law, how much more needful must such aid be to Judges in this Colony. who want trained assistance, not only in Common Law but in Equity, in Bankruptcy, in Probate an i in Admiralty and other branches. The less the learning and ability of the Judges and the wider their functions, the more do they stand in need of the precise technical knowledge and of the assistanc of good Registrars. We could enlarge on the anxieties of the Judges, which have certainly be doubled by the chaotic state of the Registry since recent appointments and changes, but it is sli cient to call attention to what the Commissioners said to the Chief Justice (see page 65), and which equally applies to all Judges: "You ought not be harassed" about such matters.