The magistrates in the neighbourhood of our great towns are
often more tempted to class-justice than even the country jus- tices, at least if game-law cases be excluded. At the Edmonton Petty Sessions, on Monday, three gentlemen were brought up accused of disorder, and of great violence in resisting the police, when they interfered to remove them from the place in which they were disorderly. The evidence did not rest on the authority of the police alone. Independent evidence was given by a member of the committee formed to superintend the f8te at which the disorderly conduct took place, and this gentleman swore that the police,—one of whom was severely injured, while another had a stick broken over him and was bitten in the hand 'by one of the defendants,—acted with great forbearance. Notwithstanding this, the magis- trates let off these gentlemen with a fine of £4 each and costs,
saying that they had suffered so much in the indignity of walking handcuffed to the police-station, "as if they were felons or murderers," that the Bench had determined to deal with the case lightly. If the defendants had been working- men, no allowance would have been made for the terrible in- dignity of going handcuffed to the police-station, "as if they were felons or murderers." And yet the conduct of which these persons were guilty was even more discreditable in gentlemen, than it would have been in working-men.
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