§ MR. BYLESI beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been drawn to the language employed by the stipendiary magistrate of Salford when several Christian ministers and other prominent citizens, passive resistors, were before him; whether, when they said they must obey God, he told them to go to God's country, to go anywhere, if they could not obey the laws of England to go to Canada; whether he refused to include the cases under one warrant, though admitting his discretion to do so; whether, on the same day and under the same roof other magistrates, unpaid, 1506 adjourned similar cases for a month pending the issue of a Bill now before this House; and whether he proposes to take any action towards the stipendiary magistrate in question.
§ MR. GLADSTONEI am not responsible for the observations made by magistrates in court, and have no power to interfere with their discretion in dealing with matters that come before them judicially; but I may say that I am informed that at the close of the hearing mentioned in the Question the spokesman for the defendants thanked the magistrate for the courtesy with which he had listened to them. The magistrate would have liked to include all the cases in one distress warrant, but after the matter had been carefully argued was satisfied that he had no power to do so.