§ MR. CHARLES CRAIG (Antrim, S.)To ask Mr. Attorney-General for Ireland whether the conduct of the majority of the magistrates on the Ballymacarbery bench, who on 13th January convicted Lord Ashtown's gamekeeper and his assistant of an assault and condemned them to fourteen days imprisonment, and refused to extend the imprisonment to thirty days so that the accused should have a right to appeal, and whose conviction was quashed within twenty-four hours by the Lords Justices and the accused set free, has been brought before the Lord Chancellor with a view to their being removed from the magistracy.
(Answered by Mr. Cherry.) The Answer is in the negative. The magistrates, in declining to increase the term of imprisonment awarded by them, acted quite within their powers. The conviction was not quashed, as alleged in the Question. The Lord Chancellor does not interfere with the judicial discretion vested ill magistrates.