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j AGRICULTURAL NOTES.

-+-MARKETS.

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ITEMS FOR LADIES.

NONCONFORMISTS AND HOME RULE.

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+ Back numbers of the COUXTY TIMES can be obtained at the office.-Price 2d. each. A few copies of everv number in stock. At the Merionethshire Assizes, at Dolgelley, on Tuesday, Mr Justice Vaughan Williams, addressing the gentlemen of the Grand Jury, said, he might say that no doubt they had seen in the public press and heard otherwise, that just at the present time the defendant for judicial statistics has issued certain summonses with regard to crime in the United Kingdom. And certainly as far as Wales was concerned-excepting the counties of Glamor- gan and Monmouth, in which they knew there were a great many who were not Welshmen-the returns were very satisfactory, and kept up the good character which Wales held amongst Celtic nations in respect to crime. But, it had been suggested that these returns being based upon convictions, some part of the credit was taken away from Wales by reason of the large number of acquittals in the number of cases tried. A paper had just been handed to him that morning in which it appeared that out of 19 committed to trial in 1894, 1895, and 1896, in this county-and that was not a large number, in fact it was a very small total- they found that nine had been acquitted. It was said that that was too large a proportion of acquittals, and it was suggested that the kindliness of the Welsh people towards their neighbours ex- ceeded their love of justice. He did not know much about that but he certainly saw that the per- centage of acquittals was enormously above the average for the United Kingdom. He hoped this was only an accident and that the proportion of prisoners acquitted were really innocent. It might be that in Wales people were very suspicious, and possibly some were sent for trial on charges that could net be sustained, but he seriously hoped that it did not mean that there was any disposition on the part of petty jurors to let people off who were really guilty. That would be very shocking. Here in this county as in the rest of England one found that the sense of justice was generally extremely strong, a fact which he, per- sonally, attributed to the administration of justice by the people through a body of magistrates for the people. Just now above all was the time that England ought to be showing that love of justice was the predominant feeling in the country, and that no sense of what might be gained by a different policy should ever persuade the nation to depart from the love of justice.

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