COUNTY MAGISTRATES' WAGES.
By a statute as old as the time of Richard II, County Magistrates were allowed to make a charge of 4s. per day, and the Clerk of the Peace 2s., as wages for attending Quarter Sessions. That charge has been regularly made and allowed by the Sheriff up to the close of last year (1855), when the ancient statute was repealed by the passing of the Criminal Justice Act, 18th and 19th Victoria, chap. 126. In this county these wages were clubbed together as a dinner and wine fund for the magistrates, but the old practice is now discontinued, and the magistrates will henceforth be thrown upon their own resources. In the year 1810 a long and bitter controversy, at one time wearing a serious aspect, arose among the magistracy of this county, in consequence of Mr. Welch, the chairman, having been charged by Mr. Johnson, a fellow magistrate, with misappropriating a part of these "justice wages" that had been intrusted to him. The Bench acquitted Mr. Welch.