Lord Derby, on Thursday, while laying the foundation- stone of
a new Sessions-house at Kirkdale, delivered a speech which must have made many of his fellow-magistrates wince. He said they must make up their minds to hand over their adminis- trative business to elected bodies. He did not object to the change, and did not expect either inefficiency or jobbery, but he thought the new bodies might push on improvements too fast, and so entail on posterity a heavy burden of debt. As to the unpaid magistrates, he did not think the country anxious to be rid of them, but he thought a paid Chairman of Quarter Sessions, chosen from the legal profession, would be an improve- ment, and he would like to try the experiment in Lancashire by private Bill. Such a chairman would, by degrees, be able to relieve the Judges of Assize of a considerable portion of their duties. That is true ; but why not add that a paid Chairman of Petty Sessions, making a round in the county as the County Civil Judge does, would be almost equally useful. It is in little matters, not great, that the unpaid do injustice.
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