is often done which years are required to set straight again. The Worcestershire Bench has, of late years, been singularly fortunate in its chairmen. It is only another mark of their anxiety to conduct their business on the soundest principles, that they have not suffered party considerations to sway them in the choice of the person upon whose discretion and judgment so much will always depend. The services of the Right Hon. Baronet who now fills the chair at Quarter Sessions have often been acknowledged, and are fully appreciated both by his fellow magistrates, and the body of the county at large. With regard to the administration of the criminal code which now devolves to so great an extent upon courts of Quarter Sessions, each year’s experience adds its proof that the substantial ends of justice are as well attained there—and if the commonly received maxim, _Judex damnatur cum nocens absolvitur_, be accepted as the test—even better attained, than in any other criminal court in the kingdom. In the very commencement of the present century, the county magistracy were occupied with a matter as important—at least, if the question of expense be taken as the criterion of importance—as any that has been the subject of their deliberations at more recent periods. It was the rebuilding of the county prison. The county gaol formerly stood on what is now known as Castle Hill, near to Edgar’s Tower, in the city of Worcester. It was extremely insecure; several prisoners had escaped from it, and the complaints of its absolute insufficiency for the purposes it was intended to answer, were many and frequent. {90} The county magistrates had at length come to a determination to build a new gaol on a different site; but this was no sooner known than a violent opposition was raised on the score of the cost, and few matters seem to have created so much general alarm and excitement throughout the agricultural districts as this proposal. In April, 1802, a meeting of landowners and others paying county rates was convened at the Guildhall, Worcester, at which the High Sheriff, Mr. Newnham, presided. There it was resolved, that the erection of a new prison would be accompanied with great and unnecessary expense, and that the existing gaol might be sufficiently enlarged and repaired, at a moderate cost. The magistrates still appearing determined to proceed, parish after parish protested against any such step being taken, and these protests signed by most of the influential tenant farmers, were published time by time, occupying many columns of the then diminutive Worcester newspapers. W. Welch, Esq., Chairman of Quarter Sessions, in order to correct the misrepresentations which were abroad on the subject, replied to these protests by a public letter, in which he stated that the cost of a new gaol would only be £19,000, and that properly to repair the old one would cost £13,000; that the grand jury had so often presented the gaol, that something was