I beg to second this Amendment, which I commend to the judgment of the House. For centuries jurors have been summoned to our courts, and the only method of obtaining exemption has been by an application to the judge in open court, or if the juror was ill and could not attend, he had to send a doctor's certificate, and that certificate had to be verified by an affidavit. Anybody who practises in the Law Courts knows that a very great number of applications are made by jurymen to escape from the duty of serving. The great change made by this Bill of taking away the careful decision of the judge upon open applications made in Court is being done away with, and the power is left to the sheriff to decide on a written application whether any juryman who has been summoned should be exempted. The words of the Section lay down the line of action to be adopted in arriving at a decision, because the sheriff has only to be satisfied that there is good reason why the juryman should be excused. Nowhere in the Bill is the term "good reason" explained.

It has been pointed out by the Mover of this Amendment that a sheriff does not mean the High Sheriff, but it means the Under-Sheriff, who is generally a solicitor of high standing practising in one of the chief towns of the country in an Assize Court, and if it is a Sessions Court he is the clerk of the peace. I suggest to the Home Secretary that anybody can appreciate the enormous pressure that will be put on the Under-Sheriff, who has to exercise this jurisdiction without publicity, by his friends and acquaintances. In this matter we ought to see that everybody does his duty as a juryman fairly and squarely, and is not let off except for good reasons and good cause, and in justice to the sheriff or clerk of the peace who arrives at these decisions they should not be subject to pressure which can be put upon them. I think it would be going a long way to obtain that object if this Amendment were accepted, because the result would be that both these officers who had to make these decisions would find it necessary to prepare for the judge a list of the names of the jurymen who have made applications to be exempted, setting out the cause for which each juryman had been excused.