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fusal, he (Lord Coke) says, that in all cases where an officer is bound upon request to exercise his office, if he does not do it upon request, he forfeits it; as, if the steward of a manor be requested by the lord to hold a Court, if he does not do it, it is a forfeiture." In Philips v. Berry (a), the Bishop of Exeter, the visitor, had deprived the rector of Exeter College, Oxford, for contumacy; and, at page 9, it appears that Holt, C. J., and all the other justices, agreed that contumacy was a good cause of deprivation. There the question was, whether the Defendant had contumaciously refused to admit the visitor. In Rex v. The Corporation of Wells (b), in a proceeding by mandamus to restore to a recordership, Lord Mansfield, at p. 2004, sanctions the law as laid down by Hawkins, that an officer is liable to a forfeiture "for neglecting to attend his duty at all usual proper and convenient times and places, whereby any damage shall accrue to those by or for whom he was made an officer." In dealing with the question of neglect of duty, all the charges are substantially the same.

But, secondly, subject to the general superintendence of the Court of Queen's Bench over Courts of inferior jurisdiction, the decision of the Quarter Sessions was final. They were the sole judges to determine on the truth or falsehood of the charges, and it was not open to the Plaintiff at the trial to go into the merits. Evidence was tendered for him to controvert every allegation. He proposed to prove that he had not misdemeaned himself; that he had not maliciously, but bonâ fide, refused to record the order; that the order to pay the money was invalid, that the justices who made it had no power to make it, and so on; and, in fact, to contradict the finding of the Quarter Sessions, and so, by means of the jury, to review their decision.

(a) 1 L. Raym. 5, 6.

It was urged for the

(b) 4 Burr. 1999.

Plaintiff, that the jurisdiction of the Quarter Sessions depended upon whether or not he had misdemeaned himself, and therefore that that must necessarily be a question for the jury. But where jurisdiction depends upon the existence of a fact to be found by an inferior tribunal, the finding of that tribunal upon that fact is conclusive. In The Queen v. Bolton (a), it was held that when a conviction or order of justices is returned to the Queen's Bench, and the proceedings are regular in form and in practice, and the case one over which the justices had jurisdiction, the Court will not hear affidavits impeaching their decision on the facts, nor, if they return the evidence, will it review their judgment thereupon: that the test of jurisdiction is, whether the justices have power to enter upon the inquiry, not whether their conclusions in the course of it were true or false. It may, however, be shown by affidavit that they had no authority to commence an inquiry, inasmuch as the question brought before them was not one to which their jurisdiction extended; and this, although by misstatement they have made the proceedings on the face of them regular. In that case, an order of justices for delivering up a house to parish officers under stat. 59 Geo. 3, c. 12, ss. 24, 25, was correct in form and made on a proper information, summons and hearing, and the Queen's Bench (on certiorari) refused to inquire into the reasonableness of their judgment, either on affidavit or on the evidence returned with the proceedings, although the Act gives no appeal against such order. The whole judgment of Lord Denman, C. J., in that case, commencing at p. 71, is pertinent to the present. If the propriety of the order of dismissal could be reviewed by a jury in this action, the effect would be to invalidate all proceedings, and many years after the tribunal constituted by the statute had decided upon the evidence before them that the Plaintiff

(a) 1 Q. B. 66.

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was wrong, he might adduce other and different evidence before a jury to show that he was right. In In the matter of Clarke (a), upon motion to file and quash a return to a writ of habeas corpus, an order of the Master of the Rolls committing for contempt, appeared by his statement to be made in the due exercise of his jurisdiction, and the Court refused to receive affidavits to show that the order was made in a private room and not in Court. In that case, at p. 630, Lord Denman, C. J., says, "The Court of Chancery, as the warden informs us, has stated by its order that this party was committed, at the bar of the Court, to the custody of the warden, for a contempt. We are bound to give credit, in the first instance, to the statement in that order. It is said that, under supposable circumstances, the order may have been wrongly made: but we cannot intend that. We must give so much credit to the order as to suppose that it was grounded upon a contempt actually committed, and was a proceeding at the bar of the Court." At p. 634, Patteson, J. says, "The only real question now is, whether affidavits are admissible to show that the statements in the order are not true. There is no case in which a party has been allowed in this way directly to contradict facts set forth in an order. All that the Courts have permitted has been to allege a collateral extrinsic fact, confessing and avoiding, as it were, the disputed order... Brittain v. Kinnaird (b) shows that a fact directly stated on a conviction is not to be controverted . . . Finding this matter directly stated in the order of a competent Court, and on a point so entirely within its own knowledge, we cannot allow it to be controverted." In Rex v. Grundon (c) a sentence of expulsion unappealed from, given in evidence on an indictment for assaulting a fellow commoner of Queen's College,

Cambridge, by turning him out of the College garden, was held conclusive for the Defendant. There evidence was offered on the trial to show the illegality of the sentence; and at p. 321, Lord Mansfield says, "But supposing Mr. Crawford" (the person assaulted) "were subject to the rules and orders of the college; in that case it is insisted that the sentence of expulsion is illegal: And at the trial, the statutes of the college were offered in evidence to show that it should have been signed by the master and a majority of the fellows, whereas it was signed by the master and one fellow only. The answer to it is, that even if the allegation were well founded, the merits, the justice or the regularity of the expulsion cannot be entered into at the assizes; but the proper mode of impeaching it, is by appeal to the visitor." The judgments of Lord Denman, C. J., and the other Judges in Carus Wilson's case (a), are also in point. The questions there arose upon a return to a writ of habeas corpus, directed to the gaoler and Viscount of Jersey, to bring up a prisoner detained by a sentence of the Royal Court of Jersey, and at p. 1015, Lord Denman, C. J, says, "But here it appears that a contempt was supposed to have been committed. That is a case in which it becomes the unfortunate duty of a Court to act as both party and judge, and to decide whether it has been treated with contempt. We cannot decide upon the face of this return that they have come to a wrong conclusion." Although this form of action was suggested, when the case came before the Queen's Bench on certiorari on 8th June, 1865, Blackburn, J., then cautioned the Plaintiff that it was not to be taken that he had any remedy. The proceeding before the justices was a proceeding in rem, and, like a judgment of the Admiralty Court, final. It alters the status of the party against whom it is given. The cases on this point are collected in the notes to the Duchess of Kingston's case (b).

(a) 7 Q. B. 984, 1014. (b) 2 Smith, L. C. 6th ed. pp. 679, 699.

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Third. It is said on the other side that the Plaintiff was justified in refusing to enter the order for the payment to Mr. Scudamore, upon the ground that the justices were personally liable to pay that money if it was not paid out of the county rates, and, therefore, that the Quarter Sessions, who made the order, or some of them, had a pecuniary interest. Assuming that to be so, the Plaintiff was bound to record the order. It was said that the order had been made by the justices in relief of themselves. But if that was so, the Plaintiff had no right to say that it was void, and set himself up against the Court who made it and said that they considered it valid. At the most it was voidable, and in that case it should have been brought up and quashed by certiorari. In Dimes v. The Proprietors of the Grand Junction Canal (a), an incorporated public company filed a bill in equity against a landowner. Lord Chancellor Cottenham had an interest in the company as a shareholder, a fact unknown to the Defendant in the suit; and, on appeal, affirmed the order of a Vice-Chancellor granting the relief sought. It was held, that the Lord Chancellor was disqualified, on the ground of interest, from sitting as Judge in the cause, and that his decree was therefore voidable, and must consequently be reversed; but Parke, B., at p. 785, states the unanimous opinion of the Judges to be, that the order" was not absolutely void, on account of his interest, but voidable only." In Ranger v. The Great Western Railway Company (b), there was a stipulation in a contract between a railway company and a building contractor, that in case of dispute between the contractor and the assistant resident engineer, the decision of "the principal engineer of the company" should be final; but at the completion of the works, if the contractor and the principal engineer differed, the differences were to be settled by arbitration. After dif

(a) 3 H. L. Cas. 759.

(b) 5 H. L. Cas. 72.