16 AUGUST 1924, Page 3

. The Government are likely to hear a good deal

more about the Lord Chancellor's action in removing Mr. E. A. Dent, of Brough, Yorkshire, from the. Bench of Magistrates. The Lord Chancellor's declared reason for his act was that Mr. Dent cannot properly administer the law as he is himself a breaker of the law, being .a passive resister against the Education Rate. It seems, however. that Mr. Dent has been a passive resister for twenty years, and his recent appointment as a Justice of the Peace was presumably made in the knowledge of this fact. We fancy that there must be other magistrates who are passive resisters. They take the line—though we our- selves think it entirely wrong—that as the law provides for compulsory collection of the Education Rate by distraint as an alternative to voluntary payment, they are not breaking the law by resisting what they call a sectarian levy.