a. 80. W 1042.
C. 0.
462
00
HONGKONG.
8. April...
CERTIFICATE of Leave of Absence for
Souths The Honorable
188/.
granted to
Sir John Smale, R.
Chief Justice
%
The Daily Press.
HONGKONG, APRIL 9TH, 1881.
FAREWELL TO THE CHIEF JUSTICE
The members of the legal profession assembled this morning to bid farewell to the Chief Justice on the eve of his departure for England.
There were present Mr. Justice Snowden, on bench; the Attorney-General, Mr. Hayllar, Q.C., M Francis, Hon. Ng Choy, Mr. Maclean, and Mr. Smith, members of the bar; and Messrs. Sharp, Wotton, Stephens, Johnson, Dennys, Stokes, Donoon, and Mossop, solicitors; and the officers of the court.
The Attorney-General said—Your Lordship has intimated that this is the last occasion on which you will preside in this court. Your Lordship will not be surprised that it is the unanimous wish of my brethren of the legal profession that I should, on their behalf and on my own, address to your Lordship a few words of kindly farewell. Your Lordship entered the public service of this island in 1851 as Attorney-General, and you were promoted to the office of Chief Justice in 1866, so that for twenty years your Lordship has been connected with the administration of justice in this Court. My lord, it is impossible to look back upon the history of those twenty years without being sensible of the very valuable nature of the services which you have been able to render to the Colony during that period. My lord, it is the special privilege, I apprehend, of the profession to which I belong, to find expression for the estimate that will be formed of your Lordship's services in the Colony. We have had special opportunities of forming a high appreciation of how the duties of your office have been discharged. We have been sensible of the great powers, the sane understanding, the large experience, the vigorous mind, the varied knowledge of law, the unwearied industry that you have devoted to the work of this court. My lord, if that were all, we might form a just and a cold appreciation of what we and the colony are losing in your Lordship's departure. We might feel, we must feel, that we should suffer a loss, and that a niche would be void that could not be easily filled, but I think, my lord, I shall express the feeling of the legal profession—I know I shall express my own—when I say that it is with something of a warmer feeling than that of mere just appreciation, that we part from you, when we remember other qualities which your Lordship has exhibited. We have witnessed the unflagging energy, the unvarying cheerfulness, the unfailing zeal with which, though now advancing in age, you have been ready from first to last (I speak according to tradition of the first, according to the knowledge of all of us as to the last) to place your services at the disposal of the colony, to give what you could to the public welfare in this court. We are not less sensible, but more sensible, of what we owe to you in this respect when we recollect, it is not here alone, and not only as presiding on that bench, that your labours have been given to the public use. My lord, I speak according to tradition which is the best of evidence, tradition which tells us,
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of this generation, that it was largely owing to your Lordship's efforts that in days gone by this Colony was freed from the disgrace which attached to participation in the coolie traffic at Macau. By denunciations from the bench, in the Council, and wherever your voice was heard you lent powerful aid to the good cause, to the successful issue of which the statute-book of this Colony bears witness. We have not been allowed to forget the character of those labours, because in more recent times, in the present day, your Lordship has in the same spirit of humanity devoted yourself to such steps as were possible for the suppression of that crime of kidnapping which is unfortunately too prevalent in our community. It must be a satisfaction to your Lordship to feel that in the firm and consistent administration of the law for that purpose you have enlisted the sympathies of all respectable classes in the community, not least that of many of the Chinese. Now, my lord, I think we must all feel these are not mean services, and they are services which reflect honour on the profession of the law, for they exhibit the law working in the cause of humanity. My lord, the opinion of the colony, the opinion of the community at large, will not be doubtful as to the nature of these services. If I may use legal phraseology I may say that that opinion will enter a judgment in your favour that can never be reversed. My lord, you are leaving us, but you are leaving us with faculties, as we all know, unimpaired and with natural force unabated. Therefore I think we may say that to a sincere and fervent wish we may add a confident hope that for many years to come you may enjoy health and happiness in a new sphere of activity and afterwards grateful rest. On behalf of the legal profession in this Colony I bid your Lordship farewell.
The Chief Justice, in reply, said—Mr. Attorney-General, gentlemen of the bar, and members of the other branch of the profession, you receive my best thanks for the way in which you have assembled on this occasion and supported the Attorney-General. I have to express my thanks to each branch of the profession for the kindness with which I have ever been treated by them, although they have always presented that independence towards the bench which they felt it their duty to assume in order that they might transmit it undiminished to their successors, that same independence which has made England what it is. At the same time, they have exercised that privilege with the prospect that is before them that they may come—I hope you all will come to face the bar as you are now facing the bench. You have sometimes been placed in antagonism, as it were, in the interests of your clients, to the bench. Mr. Attorney-General, I thank you especially for the very eloquent terms in which you have spoken of me, and for the, I fear, exaggerated terms you have used towards me. I feel there is some exaggeration in what you have said, though kindness has dictated it, but I do feel an especial satisfaction that the gentleman who has now addressed me has known so well as he has done what are the habits and customs and views of the English bar and bench. It is a pride to me that the Attorney-General who has addressed me in the language he has now done is a distinguished and yet to become more distinguished son of a distinguished father, a Queen's Counsel and member of our bar in England. I therefore the more appreciate what you have uttered. The