asked the Attorney-General whether there is any limit, and, if so, what limit to the period during which magistrates may keep persons in prison who refuse to or are unable to find sureties whenever such binding over is considered desirable by the police?

It is for the magistrate and not for the police to determine whether there should be a binding over. The limit to the period during which magistrates may order a defendant to be imprisoned in default of finding sureties to keep the peace, or to be of good behaviour to a particular individual is fixed by Statute to six months. There is no statutory limit for imprisonment in default of finding sureties in other cases. The practice is to limit the period to six months.

asked the Attorney-General whether his attention has been called to the statement made by Mr. Dickinson, stipendiary magistrate at Bow Street Police Court, that his power of demanding sureties from citizens convicted of no crime and of sending them to prison if they could not or did not find such sureties depended not on any Statute, but was his by virtue of his commission; and, if so, whether he will state the precise words in this magistrate's commission which gives him this power; whether all justices of the peace have similar powers; and whether the wording of these commissions is in the hands of the executive alone and based on no Act of the legislature?

As the magistrate has granted an application on behalf of the defendants to state a case for the consideration of the High Court, this matter is sub judice, and it would not be proper that I should give any answer to my hon. Friend's question.

asked the number of persons who have been bound by the Metropolitan magistrates to give sureties to keep the peace without having been indicted for or convicted of any crime during the years 1891–5, 1896–1900, 1901–5, 1906–10, 1911, 1912; and how many of these persons went to prison in default of finding such sureties?

I can only give figures from 1893, and those which I give are for the whole of the Metropolitan Police district. For the years 1893 to 1895 the number ordered to find sureties was 16,793, and the number who went to prison was 1,297. For the following five-year periods the figures are:—

	1896–1900.	1901–1005.	1906–1910.
Ordered to find sureties	28,555	25,419	27,349
Sent to prison	2,216	1,001	834

For the year 1911 the number ordered to find sureties was 6,409, and the number who went to prison was eighty-two. The figures for 1912 are not yet available.