158 Stanley Street

THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE LAW

(To the Editor of the Age.)

Sir, — Your valuable journal is indeed a boon to the public. Always open to receive communications from the aggrieved, — it is the best check upon rascality I know of in ths city.

Allow me to express the hope that you will never swerve from the path you are pursuing, and that you will reap that reward which is always sooner or later bestowed upon a consistent course of action.

My object in now writing to you is to call the attention of the public to the administration, or rather maladministration of our laws in certain courts. I do not mean now to suggest remedies, but to describe facts. Much talk there is at present about the amalgamation of the professions ; that barristers shall not be barred from direct contact with their clients, and that attorneys shall have the same privileges as barristers.

But the reform of law which I hold to be the most essential, is: — That the law shall be a terror to evil doers, and not the cloak under which ruffians and swindlers can hide their faces, and by means of which they can succeed in evading justice.

In certain courts your only chance of success seems to be this: — You must strain your powers of invention for some superlative of the Billingsgate dictionary, and, having violated all rules of propriety and gentlemanly conduct, you must give a nice finish to the whole by making a Pecksniffian appeal to the importance of upholding morality, &c., with which, of course, some deteriorated Chief of the modern Australians is deeply impressed, and you leave the dirty field of battle a victor, and the admired of all admirers.

There are certain volcanoes of mud in the world, solfataras exhaling pestiferous stinks. Their eruptions, when violent, are highly dangerous to the inhabitants of the surrounding country. The effluvia arising from the filth ejected poison the atmosphere and spread disease and death amongst the unfortunate sojourners in the district. Such volcanoes there are in Melbourne, a fact which must be highly interesting to our savans; but by all means let these Volcanoes remain where they are and let them not be transplanted into our Supreme Court. The inundation of filth there would be most prejudicial, most noxious, and might occasion a plague.

I am given to understand that such a transplanting is considered possible, and I can well understand the horror which the Bar of the Supreme Court feel lest this filthy lava stream should succeed in penetrating into the region of the Supreme Court.

The other day I read in your journal about “What may happen to a man in Dunolly.” What has happened to many men in Melbourne would require volumes to describe.

Have you any doubt whatever that you are at the antipodes? Go to certain courts. It may happen that there you are convinced that you have indeed arrived at the antipodes of justice; at’ the antipodes of morals; at the antipodes of decorum; at the antipodes of gentlemanly conduct. That most of us have at one time or another found ourselves at the antipodes of cash is best known to whom it may concern; but whilst you are sure to remedy this evil, it is by far more difficult — by far more important, to cure the others.

My ideas on this point I shall with your permission communicate ‘to you on some future occasion; and I trust that, although you may, perhaps, discover somewhere the ‘logic of barbarism,’ you will not find many ‘ barbarisms of logic ‘ with which the English law seems to be so tastefully ornamented.

I have the honor to be, Sir,

Your obedient servant,

W. SCHULTZ.

Stanley Street west, North Melbourne,

November 4th, 1856.

source The Age, 4/11/1856