The Evesham Journal of this day week gives an account
of a rather remarkable charge made before the magistrates at the Winchcomb Petty Sessions against some agricultural labourers for assaulting two young men, Mr. T. A. Ilubard and Mr. Henry Harrison. It appeared from the evidence of two witnesses that these gentlemen, one of whom was armed with a loaded revolver, had been throwing stones or dirt at the speakers who addressed a moonlight meeting of agricultural labourers at Ashton-under-Hill ; that two of them, James Archer and George Cotton, pursued their assailants, and asked them why they had thrown the stones, when Mr. Hubard denied that he had thrown any stones, produced his revolver, and threatened to shoot any one who touched him, where- upon Cotton knocked him down. One of the speakers at the meet- ing, Mr. Yeats, persuaded the labourers to retire, when they were contemplating acting on a modified version of the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol's hint and ducki g the two young men in a horse-pond. The magistrates were obliged to dismiss the summons, but if the scene in court be properly reported, their parenthetical interjections of anger against the advocate who defended the labourers were highly improper, and showed a violent leaning to the side of the accusers, who were really the incriminated parties. For instance, when Mr. Smith Wood, the counsel of the labourers, said that Cotton had a perfect right to knock Mr. Huhard down after he had presented the revolver at him, the Chairman intervened with, " I will not sit here if you go on like that. Prove your case." But when the father of one of the young men, the Rev. J. Harrison, interrupted the counsel by very personal remarks on his "little sarcastic eyes," Mr. Harrison was not reproved by the Bench. As the Bench was fair enough to dismiss the charge, we suppose we must not say too much dbout their obvious and vehement bias. But it was the kind of bias, if the Evesham Journal may be trusted, which, if acted upon, would very soon discredit the administra- tion of justice in the counties.
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