to Game); KEEPERS OF BILLIARD TABLES (8 & 9 Vict. c. 109, An Act to amend the Laws concerning Games and Wagers); and of THEATRES (6 & 7 Vict. c. 68, An Act for Regulating Theatres.) The various statutes upon these subjects, con- Licences. tain very many provisions requiring careful observance; and for full information, therefore, it is necessary to refer the reader to the enactments themselves. Before, however, leaving the subject, some remarks may properly be made upon the rules which should guide justices in the exercise of their discretion. On reference to sect. 6 of the 9 & 10 Geo. 4, c. 61 (for licensing alehouses), it will be seen that justices who are interested in the licence in any of the numerous ways therein specified, are prohibited from acting or being present at the licensing meeting; and although there is no similar prohibition with reference to other kinds of licences, good taste will, in every case, suggest that, whenever a justice has a personal interest either in granting or withholding a licence, he should carefully abstain from taking any part as a magistrate in the proceeding. In all cases of granting licences, a very wide discretion is permitted to justices, it being, with reason, supposed that, from their position in the locality, and their opportunities of forming a correct judgment upon the subject, they are, in many cases, the only, and in most of them, the best persons to say whether or not, in any given case, a licence should be granted or refused. Where, therefore, the question is one of discretion with the justices, little can be said, except that it is to be expected that, in an age such as the present, remarkable for the enterprize and improved taste of the middle and working classes, that discretion will be exercised with no narrow and contracted views, but with the enlightened object, as far as in them lies, of pro Special sessions for moting the greater convenience, comfort, and enjoyment of the people at large. In a former chapter attention was directed to passing the occasion of special sessions being held for the Highway Surveyor's hearing of appeals against poor rates. There accounts, and are other occasions upon which special sessions settling jury lists. are to be held, for the purposes, amongst other things, of appeals, such as that for the passing of the accounts of the Surveyor of Highways, under the 5 & 6 Will. 4, c. 50, s. 44, and for the reviewing, allowing, and appealing against the list of jurors. By the 6 Geo. 4, c. 50, An Act for consolidating and amending the Law relative to Jurors and Juries, the churchwardens and overseers of every parish are annually to make out a list of all persons within their parish qualified and liable to serve on juries, a copy of which is, on the three first Sundays in September, to be fixed upon the principal door of every church, chapel, and other place of religious worship within their parish, having first subjoined a notice that all objections to the list will be heard by the justices at a time and place mentioned; and, in the last seven days in September, the justices are to hold a special sessions, at which the list is to be produced, and the parish officers are to answer, upon oath, such questions as the justices may put. At the same petty sessions, persons not qualified and liable to serve on juries may make their objection, and have their names erased. The grounds of disqualification and exemption are fully stated in the act. Powers to act ex officio. There are many occasions upon which justices have a power of acting ex officio with other bodies of functionaries, and of becoming, when so acting, an integral portion of such bodies; thus, they are empowered to act as Commissioners of Assessed Taxes and the Land-tax : (7 & 8 Geo. 4, c. 75, s. 1; 3 & 4 Will. 4, c. 95; 45 Geo. 3, c. 48, s. 3; and 52 Geo. 3, c. 95, ex officio. s. 31.) So, too, justices of the peace of the Acting county through which a turnpike road passes may act as trustees or commissioners of the road, as if they were named as such in the turnpike act relating to the road (3 Geo. 4, c. 126, s. 7); and by the 4 & 5 Will. 4, c. 76, s. 38, it is enacted, "that every justice of the peace residing in any such parish (which has been united into a union) and acting for the county, riding, or division in which the same may be situate, shall be an ex officio guardian of such united or common workhouses, and shall, until such board of guardians shall be duly elected and constituted as aforesaid; and also, in case of any irregularity or delay in any subsequent election of guardians, receive and carry into effect the rules, orders, and regulations of the said commissioners; and after such board shall be elected and constituted as aforesaid, every such justice shall ex officio be, and be entitled, if he think fit, to act as a member of such board, in addition to, and in like manner as, such elected guardians." when Having now treated of the chief matters with Justices which justices not assembled in quarter sessions compellable will have at times to deal, it may be proper, before to act. entirely quitting this branch of the subject, to observe that, although the duties thus discussed are unremunerated and voluntary, nevertheless, when justices have placed themselves in a position to perform them, they may be compelled to proceed to adjudicate, and finally determine any matter properly brought before them, and clearly within their jurisdiction. Upon this subject it is not, however, intended at this time to enter. At a subsequent period we shall have to consider the means by which justices can be compelled to act or be restrained from acting in matters brought under their attention; a subject fruitful of many nice considerations and refined doctrines. It will, of course, be understood that the foregoing chapters have not been designed as a compendium of all the duties which a justice may be called upon to perform out of sessions, but as merely a full specimen of those varied proceedings in which at times it may be his duty to take a part; the method of performing his duties and the practical mode of administering justice, rather than a treatise upon the law itself, being the aim and scope of these pages. Duties with reference to the quarter sessions. CHAPTER XXI. DUTIES WITH REFERENCE TO THE QUARTER SES- HAVING in the preceding chapters gone some- By the policy of our government as continued for many centuries, the great business of administering the bulk of the criminal law of the country, has been intrusted to the justices assembled at their general and quarter sessions. These sessions have been established in every county of the kingdom, and four times at least in every year they are made the means of disposing of most of the criminal charges which require the decision of a jury. The jurisdiction of Courts of Quarter Sessions over crime is therefore of a most extensive nature, and is limited only by those exceptive cases to which hereafter we shall have more particularly to refer. It is however, not merely as tribunals for the trial of criminal offences that Courts of Quarter Sessions are of importance; as civil tribunals intrusted by the Legislature to carry out many important purposes of a public nature, and more particularly to regulate the general management of county affairs, and as Courts of Appeal from the decisions of individual justices, or bodies of justices sitting in Petty or Special Sessions they are of the greatest consequence. quarter There are two descriptions of sessions of the General and peace, namely," General Sessions," and " General sessions, Quarter Sessions." The former are holden before nature of. the justices under their general authority derived from their commission, and under various statutes for the transaction of the proper business of the occasion, and may be holden as often as occasion may require; the latter are those periodical sessions which the Legislature has directed shall be holden at certain times in each quarter of the year. General Sessions, however (except in the county of Middlesex, see 7 & 8 Vict. c. 71), are now entirely merged in the General Quarter Sessions, which, with their adjournments, are the sessions which at stated periods are held in every county in the kingdom. ter sessions are to be The periods at which the General Quarter When quarSessions are now holden are fixed by act of Parliament, and it is thus by the 1 Will. 4, c. 70, holden, s. 35, enacted That in the year of our Lord 1831 and afterwards, the justices of the peace in every county, riding, or division for which quarter sessions of the peace by law ought to be held, shall hold their general quarter sessions of the peace in the first week after the 11th day of October, in the first week after the |