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County Magistrates Acting In Boroughs

Volume 49: debated on Tuesday 23 July 1839

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begged to ask the right hon. the Attorney General how far the authority of the Magistrates of Warwickshire extended into the borough of Birmingham, as some doubts appeared to be entertained on the subject.

regretted to say, that the reported opinion of the Lord Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench appeared to him not to be altogether correct. He thought the noble and learned Lord's attention had not been sufficiently drawn to the enactments on the subject. He (the Attorney General) was of opinion that the county magistrates had a jurisdiction within the new borough of Birmingham; unless there was a ne intromittent clause in the Act they could not be ousted from their jurisdiction within the borough. Now, in the Birmingham Charter there was no such clause, nor had there been any other circumstance to oust them from the jurisdiction which they originally had in the county, and all the towns within it; and with regard to the Municipal Corporation Act there was nothing in it to affect their authority. The 111th section enacted, that until the grant of a Quarter Session the magistrates are to have jurisdiction as such within the borough, and after that the power was to be what it had been previous to the passing of the Act.