BAILIE

The name by which the municii)al magistrates of Scotland are designated. The term is synonymous with alderman. BAl'LIFF. {Yr.haAWer, to deliver.) The term properly meant " le ee: " whence it came to signify more generally deputy, and was applied to those olticers who, by virtue of deputation either from the sheriff or the lords of private jurisdictions, exercised within the hundred, or whatever might be the limits of their bailiwick, certain judicial and ministerial functions. With the disuse of private and local jurisdictions, the meaning of the term became commonly restricted to such persons as were deputed by the sheriff to a ist him in the merely ministerial portion of his duty, such as the summoning of juries and the execution of writs. These persons are called bound bailiffs, so termed from the obligation which they enter into to indemnify the sheriff against the consequences of his responsibility for their right conduct in the discharge of their duty. [s. 128]