bers of the Court of Quarter Session, which, without some such guide, can only be acquired from previous professional pursuits, or gradually obtained by laborious attention and long experience. Early habits, as well at the Bar, as on the Bench, had not permitted the Author to discover the difficulties, with which those, who have neither of these advantages, have to struggle, before they are competent to take an active part in the business of a Session. In these having been pointed out to him, with an accompanying request that he would turn his attention to the removal of them, originated the following effort; for the success of which he is reasonably solicitous, as a matter of utility to others; but without that anxiety which must be the concomitant of a publication, on which a writer hopes to found a reputation for himself. Of its qualities he does not consider it necessary to say more, than that, having in contemplation principally the instruction of inex perienced Magistrates, its contents are on the whole, general and elementary, except in those instances where he found it impossible to be intelligible without descending to minute examination, and technical illustration ;-but at the same time he hopes he may, without presumption, observe, that as all the common proceedings of a Court of Quarter Session are regularly and distinctly traced, from its commencement to its conclusion ;-and not only so indeed, but even to matters posterior to, but dependent upon, and flowing, as it were, out of it; even professional gentlemen, (at least in the early stages of their career) by interleaving it for the reception of precedents and memoranda, may, make it, if they do not find it, a very useful auxiliary. Respecting the authorities cited, some brief explanation may perhaps be right. Generally speaking, the most recent decisions, where the subject under consideration was to be so illustrated, have been resorted to ; but that mode of, selection has not been by any means the uniform or unvaried criterion; for in very many instances, where the luminous determinations of earlier judges have remained uncontroverted, or have been confirmed, the strongest or most apposite case, according to the judgment of the author, has been selected for the example, without reference to the point of time in which the authority was established. CONTENTS, the time and place of holding them.-Form of the pre- CHAP. II, THE DUTY OF ATTENDANCE UPON THE SESSIONS. HEREIN, of the Custos Rotulorum, Justices, Sheriff, Clerk of the Peace, Coroner, Gaolers, Constables, Jurors, Suitors, Pleaders, &c. with their, and every of their, duties, oaths, |