signate as justices on
recommendation of the Lord Lieutenant or independently.[246] The Lord
Lieutenant is chief of the justices and keeper of the county records.
In many counties the list of justices contains three or four hundred
names (in Lancashire eight hundred), but it is to be observed that
some of the appointees do not take the oaths required to qualify them
for magisterial service and that the actual work is performed in each
county by a comparatively small number of persons. The justices serve
without pay, but the office carries much local distinction and
appointments are widely coveted. Until 1906 a property qualification[247]
was required of all save certain classes of appointees whose station
was deemed a sufficient guarantee of fitness, but in the year
mentioned the Liberals brought about its abolition. The justices are
drawn still, in large part, from the class of country gentlemen. They
are removable by the crown, but tenure is almost invariably for life.

[Footnote 245: The three ridings of Yorkshire and
the three divisions of Lincolnshire have separate
commissions, and there are a few "liberties" or
excepted jurisdictions.]

[Footnote 246: A royal commission created to
consider the mode of appointment reported in 1910;
but no important modification of the existing
practice was suggested.]

[Footnote 247: Ownership of land, or occupation of
a house, worth L100 a year.]

*180. Powers of the Justices.*--At one time the functions of the
justices of the peace were administrative as well as judicial, but by
the Local Government Act of 1888 functions of an administrative nature
were transferred all but completely to the newly created county
councils,[248] and the justices to-day are judicial officials almost
exclusively. Their judicial labors may be performed under three
conditions, namely, by justices acting singly, by two or more justices
meeting in petty sessions, and by the whole body of justices of the
county assembled in quarter sessions. The powers of a justice acting
alone are those largely of the ordinary police magistrate. He may
order the arrest of offenders; he conducts preliminary examinations
and releases the accused or commits them for indictment by a grand
jury; and he hears cases involving unimportant