§ Sir JOSEPH HOODasked the Home Secretary whether his attention has been drawn to the observations by a learned Judge at the Herefordshire Assizes on the 11th instant when he intimated his intention to resume the holding of the Assizes on the 28th instant if a certain person was committed for trial on the charge of murder; and whether, seeing that this course is liable to prejudice the prisoner at the hearing before the magistrates and the inquiry by the coroner, which are still incomplete, he proposes to take any action in the matter?
§ Mr. SHORTTThe remarks of the learned Judge, as reported in the Press, do not seem to me likely to prejudice the prisoner, and I do not propose to take action in regard to them. They seem clearly to have been made in connection with a proposed arrangement of the business of the Circuit, so as to reduce the period of detention of the prisoner pending trial in the event of the Justices considering that the case was one in which a committal for trial should take place.