s was also to be left to
town-councils, or to a committee chosen by them from their own numbers,
to grant these licences. It was proposed to divide the one hundred and
eighty-three boroughs into two schedules; the greater part of these, one
hundred and twenty-nine, were to be placed in schedule A, and would have
a commission of the peace granted them. The remaining fifty-four might
also, if they chose, have a commission of the peace on application to
the crown. With respect to those in schedule A, the town-councils were
to have the power of recommending to the crown certain persons whom
they thought proper to receive the commission of the peace within the
borough; but they were not to have the power of electing magistrates in
such sense as that the assent of the crown should not be necessary to
perfect the election. These magistrates were not to have the power
of sitting in quarter-sessions; but the bill enacted that, on a
town-council applying to the crown for the establishment of a court of
quarter-sessions, and stating that they were willing to continue the
salary paid to the recorder, the recorder should be retained if a
barrister of five years' standing. With respect to other towns desiring
to have quarter-sessions, but which either had no recorder, or where the
recorder was not a barrister of five years' standing, it was intended
that the crown should in future have the nomination of that officer. Sir
Robert Peel said that he would present no impediment to the introduction
of the bill, but would reserve all consideration of its details, every
one of which deserved a separate discussion, to a future stage of
proceedings. The bill was read a second time, without debate and without
opposition, on the 15th of June, and the committee began on tire 22nd
of the same month. The first disputed point regarded the fixing of the
boundaries of those boroughs whose limits had not been defined in the
act passed for that purpose in reference to the reform bill. The bill
provided, "That they should be, and remain the same as they are now
taken to be, until such time as his majesty shall have been pleased to
issue his letters-patent under the great seal, that he may be certified
concerning the fit metes and bounds to be allotted unto the same
respectively, and until such further time as it shall please his
majesty, by advice of his privy-council, upon inspection of the return
thereof made by the commissioners unto whom such letters-p