[events, namely: (1) By express writ under the Great Seal, discharging any particular person from being any longer justice (y); (2) By superseding the commission. by writ of supersedeas, which suspends the power of all the justices, but does not totally destroy it, seeing it may be revived again by another writ, called a procedendo ; (3) By a new commission, which virtually, though silently, discharges all the former justices that are not included therein, for two commissions cannot subsist at once; (4) By accession to the office of sheriff, which, as we have just seen, disqualifies during the year of shrievalty (2). Formerly it was thought, that if a man was named in any commission of the peace, and had afterwards a new dignity conferred upon him, this determined his office, seeing that he no longer answered the description in the commission. But afterwards it was provided, that, notwithstanding the accession of such new title of dignity, the justice on whom it was conferred should still continue a justice (a).] (5) It is provided by the Bankruptcy Act, 1883, s. 32 (as amended by s. 9 of the Act of 1890), that a debtor adjudged bankrupt shall be disqualified from being appointed or acting as a justice of the peace, until either his adjudication is annulled, or he obtains his discharge with a certificate that his bankruptcy was caused by misfortune and not by misconduct, or otherwise till five years from such discharge.

[The power, office, and duty of a justice of the peace depend on his commission, and on the several statutes which have enlarged his jurisdiction. The commission, in the first place, empowers him to conserve the peace, and thereby gives him all the power of the antient conservators at the common law, in suppressing riots and affrays, in taking securities for the peace, and in apprehending and committing criminals (). It also empowers any two or more of the justices named therein to hear and determine

(y) Lamb. 68.

(z) 1 Mar. (1554), şess. 2, c. 8. (a) 1 Edw. 6 (1547), c. 7.

(b) Indictable Offences Act, 1848; Summary Jurisdiction Acts, 1848 and 1879.

[offences, which is the ground of their criminal jurisdiction at quarter sessions (c), of which more will be said hereafter, when we have occasion to treat of crimes and the manner of their prosecution.] Besides the jurisdiction which the justices of each county at large exercise, in these and other matters, at the quarter sessions, authority is moreover given, by various statutes, to the justices acting for the several divisions, into which counties are for that purpose distributed (d), to transact different descriptions of business, at special sessions (e). By other Acts, two justices (or in some cases even a single one) are also empowered to try in a summary way, and without jury, such offences as the respective statutes particularize (ƒ); and the meeting together of justices, for such and similar purposes, is denominated a petty sessions (g). The Local Government Act, 1888, s. 8, provides, that nothing in the Act shall transfer to the county councils thereby established any business of the quarter sessions or justices in relation. to appeals by overseers or others in connection with rates; and although, by section 9 of the Act, the powers and duties. of the quarter sessions and of justices out of session with

(c) Quarter Sessions Act, 1842. (d) Division of Counties Act, 1828; Petty Sessional Divisions Acts, 1836 and 1859.

(e) County Rates Act, 1844. (f) 7 & 8 Geo. 4 (1827), c. 30, s. 29; Summary Jurisdiction Act, 1848; Criminal Justice Acts, 1855 and 1856, ss. 18, 20, 22-24; Larceny Act, 1861, ss. 9, 14, 15, 17— 19, 21-25, 33-37, 65, 66, 99, 105-110, 112, 120; Malicious Damage Act, 1861, ss. 22-25, 37-39, 41, 52, 62; Coinage Offences Act, 1861, ss. 23, 26, 27, 41; Offences against the Person Act, 1861, ss. 39, 40, 42-46, 72, 76; Summary Jurisdiction Act, 1879. As to an appeal from the

determination of justices, on а point of law, decided on a summary conviction, see Summary Jurisdiction Act, 1957; Review of Justices Decisions Act, 1872; Supreme Court of Judicature (Procedure) Act, 1894, s. 2.

(g) As to providing places for holding petty sessions, see the Petty Sessions Act, 1849; Petty Sessions and Lock-up House Act, 1868; and Summary Jurisdiction Act, 1884; and as to petty sessional divisions, see the Bastardy Act, 1845, s. 10; Petty Sessions Act, 1849; Criminal Justice Acts, 1855 and 1856; and as to clerks of justices and of special and petty sessions, see Justices Clerks Act, 1877.

respect to the county police are now vested in the quarter sessions and the county councils jointly, yet the powers and duties of the justices as conservators of the peace are not thereby affected.

In view of the troublesome nature of the duties imposed upon magistrates, and the honorary character of the office, statutory provisions have been expressly made to protect a magistrate in the upright discharge of his office (h); which, among other privileges, entitle him, on being sued for any oversight, to tender amends, and exempt him in general from being sued at all after the expiration of six months from the commission of the injury (i). He is also freed from all liability where the matter was one within his jurisdiction, unless it can be proved that he proceeded maliciously and without reasonable and probable cause. Subject to these legislative protections, a justice of the peace is liable to an action by the party injured, for illegal acts done under colour of his office (k); he is also liable to be prosecuted criminally, by indictment or information, if guilty of any corrupt or malicious abuse in the exercise of his. judicial discretion. On the other hand, when he acts fairly and bona fide, leave will not be granted to file an information against him, on account of a mere error in his proceedings (1).

It is impossible, on the plan of the present work, to enter minutely into the particulars of the accumulated authority from time to time committed to the charge of

(h) Justices Protection Act, 1848, Prickett v. Gratrex (1846), 8 Q. B. 1020; Leary v. Patrick (1850), 15 Q. B. 266; Taylor v. Nesfield (1854), 3 Ell. & Bl. 724; Gelen v. Hall (1857), 2 H. & N. 379; and Public Authorities Protection Act, 1893.

(i) Actions against metropolitan police magistrates must have been brought within three months (Metropolitan Police Courts Act,

1839, s. 53; Barnett v. Cox (1847), 9 Q. B. 617); but, semble, they may now be brought within six months (Public Authorities Protection Act, 1893).

(k) Fernley V. Worthington (1840), 1 Man. & Gr. 491; Cave v. Mountain, ib. 257.

(1) R. v. Palmer (1761), 2 Burr. 1162; R. v. Borron (1820), 3 B. & Ald. 432.

the justices of the peace. As regards administrative. matters, the former powers of the justices have been vested, for the most part, in the county councils established by the Local Government Act, 1888, s. 3; but the reader will find [in the later editions of Dr. Burn's Justice of the Peace everything relating to this subject, both in antient and modern practice, collected with great care and accuracy.] And the authority of the justices and of the county councils respectively, as regards all the miscellaneous subject-matters of their jurisdiction, will be touched upon, more or less, in such subsequent parts of these Commentaries as relate to these several matters.

IV. Constables. [The word constable is sometimes said to be derived from the Saxon koning-staple, and to signify 'the support of the king. But as we borrowed the name as well as the office of constable from the French, it seems more satisfactory to deduce it, with Sir Henry Spelman and Dr. Cowell, from that language; wherein it is plainly derived from the Latin comes stabuli, an officer well known in the empire, and who was so called because (like the great constable of France, as well as the lord high constable of England) he was to regulate all matters of chivalry, tilts, tournaments, and feats of arms, which were performed on horseback (m). The office of lord high constable hath been long disused in England, except upon great and solemn occasions; and the constables of whom we now speak are officers of a much humbler character, although they are said to have originally emanated from the office of the lord high constable (n).

Constables were formerly of two sorts, namely, high constables and petty constables. The high constables, who were ordained by the Statute of Winchester, 13 Edw. I. (1285), st. 2, c. 6 (o), were appointed at the

(m) Reeves, Hist. Eng. Law, vol. iii. p. 194; Hallam, Mid. Ages, vol. iii. p. 223, 7th edit.

(n) Lambard, Constables, 5.
(0) 4 Inst. 267.

[courts leet of the franchise or hundred over which they presided; or, in default of that, by the justices at their special sessions, as directed by the County Rates Act, 1844, s. 8. The proper duty of the high constable seems to be to keep the peace within the hundred (p), as the petty constable does within the parish or township; for the hundred was formerly answerable for all robberies committed therein by daylight. The high constables were also, by various statutes, charged with other duties, such as serving precepts and warrants or certain occasions.] But (the utility of these officers having become questionable) the justices for each county were directed by the High Constables Act, 1869, to consider and determine, whether it was necessary that the office of high constable of each hundred, or other like district, within their jurisdiction, should be continued; and, as a matter of fact, they have now almost disappeared.

[The petty constables are inferior officers in every town and parish, formerly subordinate to the high constable of the hundred, and have two offices united in them, the one antient, the other modern. Their antient office was that of headborough, tithing man, or borsholder, officials who are as antient as the time of King Alfred; and their modern office that of constable merely, which was instituted about the reign of Edward the Third, for the assistance of the high constable (g). The chief duty of petty constables is the preservation of the peace, though they also have other particular duties assigned to them by Act of Parliament, notably the service of the summonses and and execution of warrants of justices of the peace, relative to the apprehension and commitment of offenders. the execution of these warrants, the petty constable enjoys certain protections similar to those conferred on the justices themselves; e.g., an action cannot be brought against him for what he does in his office, after the

(p) 4 Inst. ubi sup.

(q) Lamb. 9.

In