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INTRODUCTION.

OF THE

OFFICE AND DUTIES

OF

A JUSTICE OF THE PEACE

IN GENERAL.

No circumstance whatever has occasioned so much alteration in the civil polity of this country, as the origin and progress of the powers of justices of the peace; and it is therefore extraordinary that this subject should be so little noticed by writers who expressly treat of the constitution of England, and the changes it has gradually experienced. Their powers have caused the abolition of the country, hundred, and other inferior feudal courts in criminal cases; and, by a variety of penal statutes, which are daily multiplying, the magistrate is made the sole judge in very many instances where the liberty and property of his fellow-subjects are affected, without the interference of a jury, and without appeal to any court where the trial is by jury; for appeals to the sessions, which are often declared to be final, are heard and determined by the justices only.

It is very extraordinary that these powers, which in so many cases repeal the celebrated clause in Magna Charta, should have been deemed of so little consequence by our political writers, as not to have the æra of their commencement ascertained. I have taken much trouble, but in vain, to trace the statute that first gave them: this, however, is obvious, that they were distributed with a very cautious and sparing hand during the times that the claims of the monarch on the side of power, and the subject on the side of liberty, were continually at issue; were much increased after those claims were more accurately defined at the Revolution, and extended in a still greater degree since the accession of the house of Hanover; from which time personal freedom and personal property have obtained a greater degree of security than speculative reasoners, without the assistance of experience, would imagine consistent with the necessary stability and energy of government.

I certainly do not mean to enter into any detail on this subject: compression and not expansion is my object. I shall, therefore, proceed to give a summary account of the office of a justice of the peace, and briefly notice such duties, and other circumstances incident to it, as do not immediately fall under any of the particular heads which form the body of the work.

There were, most likely, during the earliest period of the Saxon laws, officers, called conservators of the peace; chosen like the sheriffs, coroners, &c. by the freeholders in their county court. The appointment of these officers was vested in the crown by act of parliament, in the first year of the reign of Edward III.;

but they still retained the name of conservators of the peace, till an act of the 34 Edw. 3. c. 1. gave them the power of trying felonies; when, as Sir William Blackstone observes, they acquired the more honourable appellation of justices.

The commission of the peace, from which the power of the justices is originally derived, embraces only two objects: 1. The vesting in them the same power which the conservators used to exercise. 2. The empowering two or more of them to summon juries, and hear and determine felonies. The summary jurisdiction which is given them by a number of penal statutes, is not noticed in the commission.

From the power, however, given by these statutes, the duty of a justice, exclusive of the sessions, divides. itself into two branches: in the first of these, he is merely ministerial, acting under the common law, or such statutes as relate to the preservation of the peace, and is only competent to secure an offender by bail or imprisonment, for trial before another tribunal. In the second he acts under particular statutes, uniting in himself the powers of judge and jury, but liable to an appeal to a superior jurisdiction.

In the execution of the first branch, from the change of circumstances and manners, duties devolve on him which formerly belonged to the grand jury, and it becomes his business to inquire into, and proceed against, crimes of every description in the first instance; and there is no species of felony, from murder to petty larceny, that does not come under the pervue of the justice; and where, with the exception of murder and manslaughter only, the first process is his examina

tion and commitment; and indeed even with regard to the exception, for one instance that the examination and commitment originate with the coroner's inquest, there are ten where they originate with the justice; neither will the verdict of the interest, finding the offence manslaughter or chance-medley, preclude the justice from committing for murder.

In the execution of the second part of his duty, an awful responsibility attaches to the magistrate: to discharge it conscientiously, every incidental circumstance should be examined and weighed with the strictest attention and impartiality; to discharge it with safety to himself, he should have the particular statute before him, and draw up the conviction according to the exact form, if there is any, directed by it; and if there is not, he should follow the words of the act of parliament as nearly as possible.

As there are many acts to be done which require the authority of two or more justices, and as this must imply, that their joint opinion is required by such direction, it is clear, from common sense, as well as from the determination of the courts above, that the two magistrates ought to be together when they act; and this is the foundation of what is called a petty sessions. These are now furnished very conveniently in the metropolis by the diurnal sittings at the police offices; but the obtaining them in the country, where the justices are scattered at a distance from each other, has been sometimes a matter of difficulty from which much inconvenience has been experienced by the neighbourhood.

In most large market-towns special sessions for

licensing alehouses, appointing parish-officers, &c. are held at the principal inn; and as on these occasions, such business as requires two or more justices is generally brought forward, it has become the general practice, for the neighbouring justices to meet sometimes once a fortnight, sometimes every marketday, to transact the business of a petty sessions; and as the clerk is generally selected from the attorneys who are employed by those gentlemen in their private concerns, he will certainly be one of the first, in point of character, for legal skill and integrity.

Every justice of the peace acting for a county, must have an estate, either freehold, copyhold, or leasehold, of the clear yearly value of 1007. P. 100l. for each offence. 18 G. 2. c. 20.

No sheriff shall act as a justice. 1 M. sess. 2. c. 8.

s. 2.

Nor attorney, solicitor, or proctor. 5 G. 2. c. 18. s. 2.

Justice acting for two adjoining counties, may act for either of them in either county. 28 G. 3. c. 49. Justice may act for the county at large in any corporation within it, even if it be a county of itself. Ibid. s. 4. 9 G. 1. c. 7.

A justice must not direct his warrant to either of the parties by his oath of office, but to the peace-officers of the county, or any indifferent person he may specially appoint; but none but the peace-officers are compellable to execute it.

A justice cannot act when he is a party; but if he

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