A proposal to allow competent persons who do not hold
land to be appointed rural Magistrates was on Tuesday very coldly received. by the Peers. At present a magistrate must be possessed of a hundred a year in land, and the Earl of Albemarle proposed to. extend the qualification to all who possess /300 a year in personal property. Lord Hampton, however, moved the rejection of the Bill, the Peers present seemed to think it. essential that a Magistrate should be connected with "the county," and the Bill was only read a second time in order that Lord Cairns might propose some amendments, not specified or not re- ported, confining the Bill to persons who either had property or residences in the county. The argument comes to this,—that any man with 100 acres in Surrey must make a better magistrate than any Q.C. who lives there. The Lords are fighting also, no doubt, to retain the county taxation in the hands of the county pro- prietors, and the result of their action will be that whenever the county constituencies claim their right of self-government, they will claim also the right of electing magistrates. That would be a great evil, but it will come, if the right of selection is thus restricted by a property qualification.
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