§ MR. HUNTasked Mr. Attorney General, If it is necessary for a person named in the Commission of the Peace to take out a dedimus, &c. before he can act as a justice of the peace?
THE ATTORNEY GENERALsaid, it was very difficult to answer such a Question, but he would give the best opinion he could upon it. The oaths to be taken by a magistrate were those only which were imposed by the two Promissory Oaths Acts of 1868 and 1871; and, therefore, as the oath taken under a writ of Dedimus Potestatem had become unnecessary, the writ had become unnecessary too. In his opinion it was superfluous to take out a dedimus, but that was not quite clear. The dedimus was contained in the 13 Richard II., c. 7, and though that Act had been repealed, a subsequent statute of George I., in which the dedimus was also mentioned, was not repealed. Therefore, there were some materials, no doubt, for a legal argument upon the question whether the writ still existed, and had any virtue; but he thought that a Court of Law, whenever the question was raised before it, ought to decide, and would decide, that the issuing of the writ was no longer necessary.