A great deal of discussion has been caused by the
case in which Sir Almeric FitzRoy, Clerk of the Privy. Council, was fined by Mr. Mead at Marlborough Street Police Court last Saturday. The charge was one of " wilfully interfering with and annoying persons using Hyde Park." The police produced one witness, a woman, whose evidence was so hopelessly discredited that the prosecu- tion withdrew her. Mr. Mead, however, relied upon the otherwise unsupported evidence of the police. Sir Henry Curtis Bennett, counsel for the defendant, strongly protested on the ground that the magistrate had in effect encouraged him to cease his cross-examination of the discredited witness. He pointed out that if he had continued his cross-examination, instead of assuming, as he thought he had a right to do, that the withdrawal of the witness meant the acquittal of the defendant, he could have disproved the assertions -of the police upon which the magistrate ultimately relied.
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