ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS. o2i 



unknown witnesses when placed side by side with 

 the sworn accusation of one or two honest and 

 responsible men.* 



I have seen a magistrate, a clergyman, having 

 to do with one of these false witnesses, after 

 the witness, by a low attorney, had been examined 

 in chief, and then cross-examined by the prose- 

 cutor, recur to tliat witness again, and take a 

 further examination of him while he stood behind 

 the bar, in the company of his fellows. I have 

 seen a magistrate allow a headborough, who had 

 been summoned and fined for committing an 

 offence, on his application, half-a-crown for serving 

 tJie summons on himself; I have heard a Chairman 

 of Petty Sessions very properly rebuke another 

 magistrate, who was a clergyman, for gross and 

 illegal conduct on the Bench : and with such 

 examples as these, and many others that could 

 be adduced, there are people still who set their 

 faces against the abolition of the Justices of the 

 Peace, and tlie substitution for that body of a 

 paid Judge, on the plan of the County Court. 



'" If testimony on oath from either side clashes, then it becomes 

 a question which is the most reliable source whence it comes, and 

 decision should be arrived at accordingly. 



VOL. II. Y 



