was, that for certain reasons then brought forward, the panel should be quashed. By the present proceeding, the same question precisely is not the question upon which we are called on to give judgment, but I confess I cannot see the principle which would lead me, on the present occasion, to entertain a different judgment from what I then formed, and in which I had the concurrence of my brethren on the bench. At present, the case comes before the Court in the shape of a challenge to the array. There are several challenges, but in delivering the judgment of the Court, I shall consider the case as if there was only one, as the cases do not contain any ground of distinction between them. Whatever rule is right in one case is right in the others. Now the objection, as spread upon the face of the challenge, is this: that the Recorder of Dublin having, in the revision of names presented to him for his judgment and consideration upon the question of their allowance to be admitted upon the jury list or not, did not, as he was bound to do by the law, make from that list so presented to him, a return of all the names contained upon those lists, nor did he make the arrangement required in the new list prescribed by the Statute, when he came to arrange, according to rank and property, the names of all persons presented to him for revision, as coming from the officer in the first instance, but, on the contrary, he omitted so to do. It then goes on to state, that the said lists did not contain the names of all persons whose qualifications had been allowed upon the correcting, allowing, and signing said lists by the Recorder, but that he omitted the names of fifty-nine persons. It then avers that the said persons are resident within the district to which they belong, and that they are qualified to serve. Now, the question is, that statement having been demurred to by the Attorney General, and therefore the facts being admitted so far as they were properly pleaded, is that a ground for the allowance of this challenge to the array of the jury panel? It is necessary to consider what the law is under which those proceedings have taken place. It is a code of law incorporated into one Act, the previously existing law being thereby essentially modified and altered. Just to give an outline of what that system of laws is, as so introduced, I shall take the liberty of stating my general views upon this Act. It was made for the entire kingdom. It is not restricted to the case of the Queen v. O'Connell. It is not an act restricted to one county, but is applicable to and intended to be a statutable provision for the appointment of juries throughout Ireland during the ensuing year. Now what were the steps to be taken under it? The Act finds a list of officers provided, some of high rank and distinction, others in subordinate stations; some, like the Recorder and the magistrates in other Courts, invested with high judicial powers; others again merely ministerial officers, entrusted in different degrees and at different stages with the administration of the law connected with the preparing of the lists from which the jury were afterwards to be selected. There is a great distinction throughout the Act between judicial and ministerial officers. The Recorder is judicial; the magistrates at sessions are judicial; the Sheriff is ministerial; the collectors are all ministe

rial. Now, according as the officers so called into operation are of a judicial or of a ministerial character, in different degrees is entrusted to them the carrying the Act into operation. I must observe, that although the Act contains a great many provisions, though it appears a well-considered Act, intending to provide a general system connected with the administration of justice, and of the highest importance to all suitors and all persons, whose life, property, and character are at stake, and though intended to repeal all former Acts, and to make a general provision under the system detailed in this Act, no further proceeding appears in any part of the Statute, to limit or control the powers therein mentioned to have been provided, except as specified in the Act. The proceedings under the Act begin with the ministerial officers. The Clerk of the Peace, at a certain time of the year, in the month of July, with a view to prepare the jury list for the ensuing year, is to issue his precept to the High Constable and the several cess collectors, to make out and prepare a list of all who are to be called on to serve on the jury list. The Act defines who are to be admitted upon the jury list, and takes the precaution that none are to be admitted but those who are qualified to discharge the duty of such officer; and on the other hand, it equally desires that no person should be rejected who is duly qualified. In the city of Dublin, the parish collectors are the officers corresponding to the barony collectors in the counties in Ireland; and as the challenge has reference to the city of Dublin alone, I shall, in my observations on the Act, consider it as if it was an Act severally and solely for the city of Dublin.

The Clerk of the Peace issues his precept to the parish collectors, and they are enjoined by the language of the Act, to make full and accurate lists, omitting none, and rejecting none that are qualified; and they are to make a return of those lists to the Clerk of the Peace, and after a certain time those lists are to be laid before the Recorder, for his revision and adjudication upon the subject. What is he to revise and adjudicate upon? The right of every person within the several parishes, who claims a right to be admitted upon the list; and on the other hand, objections to the admission of any improper person who should fail to establish his right. Now, in order that those matters may be fairly investigated, the lists so returned are to remain open, in the office of the Clerk of the Peace, for a period of three weeks, and every person who may have a desire to look at the lists, is entitled by law to make himself master of them, according as they are returned. A party may oppose the claim of a person desiring to be admitted as a juror, and it is for the Recorder exclusively and finally to make an adjudication whether he is to be admitted or rejected. He is armed with full power to enable him to conduct the investigation to a satisfactory conclusion, but he is not to do so without giving the parties interested notice whether their claims are disputed. After that public investigation, the Recorder comes to a judicial decision, which, so far as I am aware of, is not controllable by any power in the community, if it. be not done corruptly. The Court of Queen's Bench has a super-:

intending power over all magistrates and officers, if an attempt is made to evade the law, or to violate it by fraud or corruption; but if no such charge is made out, their conduct is not subject to investigation or control. The Recorder has been selected by the Legislature as the judicial determiner of cases of this description. It is a high and important privilege with which he is so invested, and with it, is in a great measure connected the flow and fountain of justice, and the purity of the administration of the law. But he was left without control; and there may be very good reason why he was so, as we may presume there was for making his decision final and beyond appeal. In this case the precepts were issued and returned by the parish officers; the time was appointed for the investigation; it took place, and the Recorder made his revision, and having pronounced his decision, it was irrevisable, and could not be reversed by any one. After that was done, another duty is imposed on him, that is, that he shall make, or cause to be made, a new list, arranging the persons according to rank and property; and the Act directs, that in the newly arranged lists, he shall include all persons who, on a previous revision, have substantiated their claims before him. But it is to be observed, that no penalty is imposed on the Recorder for omitting to do this, or any other duty which the Act imposed on him. There is no imputation in this challenge, that the omission which is said to have taken place on the part of the Recorder, was the consequence of improper conduct, malversation, or corruption-none was imputed to him. But it was said the Act required he should make out the new lists according to rank and property, classing the persons according to such order required by the Act, and that he should do so with respect to all whose claims should be allowed. I do not know how far this is to be carried, but if I understand the argument right, they push it to that extent. Here were two duties imposed on the Recorder. First, he is to revise the lists delivered to him by the collector, and he then is to make a new list according to rank and property; and he was equally bound to have made no omission, but to have included in the classification of rank and property, every individual, just as much as he was bound by the Act to have allowed or disallowed his claim generally to be received as a juror. Now how far is that to be carried? Suppose the Recorder had included every person whose claim had been allowed, but suppose he had omitted to class them according to rank and property, are all subsequent proceedings to be avoided, and to be the subject of a challenge to the array, because he has omitted to follow the directions of the Statute in this one instance. Suppose he did make a classification according to rank and property, and suppose he admitted all those persons entitled, will it be contended that he has made a wrong classification, because, by the judgment he has come to, he has put men worth £2000 at the bottom of the list, and put at the top men not worth so many hun. dreds. Unquestionably he would have deviated from the directions of the Statute, but is that a reason why all those proceedings should be null and void, and why, if a trial took place, it should be in the

power of either of the parties to show that part of the Act had been deviated from, and that, therefore, the jury panel in that particular case was good for nothing. If the argument be correct, the consequences must go that length, and I cannot help thinking that such a decision would be most injurious and dangerous to the community. This is a judicial act in the Recorder, as much in one case as the other. The Act is directory in pointing out to what his attention is to be directed, but it leaves and intrusts to his discretion the manner in which he should act. Now, if that be so, and that is the position in which the Recorder stood, then his act is not to be the subject matter of a challenge to the array. I do not mean to question whether the special jury panel may not be challenged: several cases were cited, in which it was so decided: I do not mean to controvert that, the more so as it seems not to have been pressed on the other side. But I observe that in those cases a protest was made upholding their right, and nothing was done to remove it. It is not because the challenge was to the array of the special jury, but because the Recorder has not followed out the directions of the Act of Parliament, and that some person unknown has had the opportunity of making an alteration in the lists so returned, the sixty persons whose names had been allowed by the Recorder do not now stand upon the list. The Recorder was not auswerable for that; no blame was imputed to him in the way of any thing corrupt or fraudulent. If he had made a mistake, no person would contend that was to be the subject matter of investigation. Moreover, no person in the community has a revising or controlling power vested in him, and if he had come to a wrong conclusion, the Court of Queen's Bench has no power of investigating whether he was right or not. There is no averment in the challenge he did not make out the lists according to the Act; the averment is that he did not make out such a list without excluding any. The list, so made out according to rank and property, is handed by him to the Clerk of the Peace, the officer selected by the Statute, with whom such lists should be deposited; then the Recorder's duty and jurisdiction are at an end. The list then goes into the hands of a subordinate officer, whose duty is chalked out by the Act of Parliament, which he was bound to follow, and to transmit this list to the hands of the Sheriff; the duty of the Clerk of the Peace is to have the list made out, called the Jury List, and when it is so made out it is his business to hand it to the Sheriff. The Sheriff receives it, and if there had been corruption on the part of the Sheriff, who is the officer of this Court, not like the Recorder who is not, whose duties are intimately connected with preparing the jury list, he would be liable to be called on to account, and moreover that would be properly the subject matter of challenge to the array growing out of the unindifferency of the Sheriff. But this is not the case with the Recorder. Who is to try his unindifferency? He is not here, or represented by counsel. Being a judicial officer, he stands besides in the same situation as the Master of the Crown Office, in the case cited from Barn. & Ald. In that case the Court, on public grounds, would not allow his conduct to be in

vestigated. If the conduct of the Master of the Crown Office would not be entered into, a fortiori the Recorder's cannot. This matter, unless there is some fraud on the part of the Recorder, cannot be entered into upon a challenge taken to the array by a person who comes for trial upon the issue joined by the parties, with which the Recorder has nothing to do. The Recorder has decided the matter, and his decision is final. It would be a great inconvenience that a delay should arise in this case, because the formation of the jury panel is a matter which the country is interested in upholding. A proposition was made by Mr. Moore; I am not called on to say whether the Attorney General should have accepted that offer; I am not called on to give judgment on that; but I say, every person who may be a suitor during the year 1844, has a direct interest in supporting and sustaining those proceedings. What would be the consequence if those proceedings are to be set aside? The necessary consequence would be, that it would be open to every person to take such an objection, and that his adversary would not have the power or the means of resisting the objection and upholding the list. This is a general list, and the parties concerned in supporting it are all the persons who may be suitors for the year 1844. They would have no means of explaining the facts alleged against the panel, because they were no parties to the making up of the general list, and knew nothing of it. This Act was introduced for the general purposes of the country, and whether wisely or not, the law has provided that the proceedings of the Recorder should be considered as judicial, and not capable of being appealed from, or revised by any other tribunal. The result is, that the jury list being prepared, the Sheriff is obliged by the law to take the materials as he finds them returned to him by the Clerk of the Peace, from which return he is to form his special jury. He has no power of altering it. He could not add to it any of the names which have been omitted; therefore, there being a general beneficial object to be attended to, there being, as far as I can see, no intention on the part of the Legislature to give any power of investigating or appealing from the proceedings before the Recorder, inasmuch as they are of a judicial and not a ministerial kind; my opinion is, that the demurrer must be allowed. I do not mean to throw out any opinion as to what has taken place. It may be explained, or may remain in obscurity. That is not the question. We have no power of investigating it. I therefore think, in conformity with the judgment of the Court on Friday, that this challenge is not maintainable.

Mr. JUSTICE BURTON.-This case has been the subject of so learned and deliberate a judgment by my Lord Chief Justice, and I so fully concur in all that has been said by him, that I do not think it necessary to occupy the public time further at this hour. I do not entertain any reasonable doubt on the subject; and I can only say that I have felt a great deal of anxiety in the course of the discussion, that every thing which concerns the administration of justice in the superior courts should be free from every possible imputation, and that there should be no interruption to the course of strict and