Shropshire is divided into the hundreds of Albrighton, Bradford, Brimstree, Chirbury, Clun, Condover, Ford, Munslow, Oswestry, Overs, Pimhill, Purslow, Stottesden, and Wenlock franchise, and contains 224 parishes, and 5 extra-parochial places. By the recent Reform and Division of Counties’ Acts, this county is divided into the northern and southern divisions, each of which returns two members to Parliament. The boroughs of Shrewsbury, Bridgnorth, Ludlow, and Wenlock also return two members each. The expenditure of the county for the year ending December, 1850, was £12,156. 17s. 4¼d., of which £3,587. 10s. 2d. was expended on the Gaol and House of Correction; £2,257. 10s. 7d. in prosecutions; £605. 17s. 5d. on bridges and roads; £562. 13s. 4d. on the Lunatic Asylum; coroners, £501. 1s. 2d., and Clerk of the Peace, £436. 4s. 9d. Judge Blackstone says:—England was first divided into counties, hundreds, and tithings by Alfred the Great, for the protection of property and the execution of justice. Tithings were so called because ten freeholders formed one. Ten of these tithings were supposed to form a hundred or wapentake, from an ancient ceremony, in which the governor of a hundred met all the aldermen of his district, and holding up his spear, they all touched it with theirs, in token of subjection and union to one common interest. An indifferent number of these wapentakes, or hundreds, form a county or shire, for the civil government of which a shire-reeve or sheriff is elected annually. The magistrate above the hundredry was called the trithingman or lathgrieve, presided over three, four, or more, hundreds, formed into what was called a trithing, in some places a lathe, and in others a rape; hence the lathes of Kent, the rapes of Sussex, the parts of Lincoln, and trithings or ridings of Yorkshire. The kingdom was divided into parishes soon after the introduction of Christianity, by Honorius, Archbishop of Canterbury, in the year 636, and the boundaries of them, as marked in Doomsday book, agree very nearly with the present division. The custom, which still continues, of making the hundreds responsible for the excesses of a lawless mob, is an appendage of the Saxon system of tithing. As the extreme ignorance of the age made deeds and writings very rare, the County or Hundred Court was the place where the most remarkable civil transactions, were finished, and, in order to preserve a memorial of them, and prevent all future disputes, here testaments were promulgated, slaves manumitted, bargains of sale concluded, and, sometimes, for greater security, the most considerable of these deeds were inserted in the blank leaves of the parish Bible, which thus became a kind of register, too sacred to be falsified. It was not unusual to add to the deed an imprecation on all such as should be guilty of that crime. In the County Court or shiremotes, all the freeholders were assembled twice a year, and received