It is curious how history repeats itself and how a lay magistracy, as a type, always tends to act without sympathy or consideration for the poor. A hundred years ago the Yorkshire magistrates came to the conclusion that it was a most improper thing that poor people committed for trial to the House of Correction should be allowed to idle their time away at the expense of the county, so they actually required them to work for their living, and as the treadmill was the only apparatus of a commercial character in the gaol the poor untried prisoner was put to walking round a wheel in company of his convicted brother. The way in which the matter was put by Mr. John Headlam, M.A., Chairman of the Quarter Sessions for the North Riding of the County of York, is a perfect specimen of the true Dogberry temperament: "With respect to those sentenced to labour as a punishment, I apprehend, there is no difference of opinion. All are agreed that it is a great defect in any prison where such convicts are unemployed. But as to all other prisoners, whether debtors, persons committed for trial, or convicts not sentenced to hard labour, if they have no means of subsisting themselves, and must, if discharged, either labour for their livelihood or apply for parochial relief; it seems unfair to society at large, and especially to those who maintain themselves by honest industry, that those who, by offending the laws, have subjected themselves to imprisonment, should be lodged and clothed and fed, without being called upon for the same exertions which others have to use to obtain such advantages." Of course the whole question is begged when an untried prisoner is called an offender against the laws. The Headlam view of him always has been, and is to-day, that the mere fact that a policeman has arrested him is proof that he is an offender; this for all time has been justices' law, but it is doubtful whether the old doctrine that a man is to be deemed innocent until found guilty by a jury of his peers is not still sound law and ought not to be more fully recognised by the lay magistrates. Of course the particular wrong that Mr. Headlam was contending for has long been abolished, not indeed without much argument and trouble, but we still punish an untried man by imprisoning him before trial, and in very many cases this is wholly unnecessary. The idea of keeping a man in prison is that he should be forthcoming on the day of trial. In some serious cases it is obviously necessary to keep a man in custody, but in many small cases if a cheap bail was fixed there would be no difficulty in finding the sureties and the prisoner could be outside arranging for his defence and earning money for the support of his family until the day of the trial.