The mere breaking up of the court by Speaker at prayers' enables the learned counsel to work his pump against time, whenever such an expedient is required.

It is a court, in which, at the greatest expense, the client derives the least possible benefit from his counsel. In consequence of the simultaneous sittings of the committees, a bunch of barristers must be retained to secure the chance of catching one. If Mr. Austin could, like Kehama, split himself into eight Austins, and drive into all the eight gates of Padalon at once, he could hardly be present at the several committees for which his briefs are bagged-bagged, but not held. All the client can expect from Mr. Austin is the contingent remainder of a speech, and such assistance as he can give by advising upon the notes of evidence; and here, mark the snowball of expense increasing as it rolls. You are compelled to multiply your counsel, because they do not attend the trial; the very non-attendance, which you expect and pay for, necessitates a consultation every evening, in order that your leader may direct the morrow's proceedings according to the evidence which he has not heard: which same consultation inflicts upon the happy petitioner three fees to counsel, three fees to their three clerks, three additional briefs, and three fees to the agent or solicitor for attendances therewith,' and so on, as long as the committee lasts.

It is a court in which the judges do not openly give their reasons for their judgments. We are mad after publicity in legal proceedings. We often open the doors when they ought to be closed; and close them in this case, where, of all others, the control of public opinion is required.

It is a court composed of an uneven number of judges, so as to give a casting vote; or in other words, to enable, in very many cases, any clever manager first, to load, and then, to turn the scale without any appearance of gross partiality. This formation greatly dulls the moral sense of the judges. Hear Paley's opinion on this point:

I should prefer an even to an odd number of Judges, and four to almost any other number: for in this number, besides that it sufficiently consults the idea of separate responsibility, nothing can be decided but by a majority of three to one; and when we consider that every decision establishes a perpetual precedent, we shall allow that it ought to proceed from an authority not less than this. If the court be equally divided, nothing is done; things remain as they were; with some inconveniency, indeed, to the parties, but without the danger to the public of a hasty precedent.'

It is a court without unity of feeling. Judges constituting a permanent bench know one another. They are acquainted with

one

one another's opinions. They compare notes—each man is aware of the tack and tact of his fellow. They learn to draw together. But the committee never become consolidated: they are brought together for once, and then never come together again.

Lastly, it is a court composed of unpaid judges. We are not inclined to maintain that no judicial duties can be discharged efficiently except by salaried functionaries, or that good salaries always make good judges; but, verily, a good salary goeth a good

way.

To this court, so imperfectly constituted, are assigned two branches of judicature essentially different from each other: the one is criminal, the other is civil.

In cases of bribery and corruption, the election committee is a criminal court. It has to decide whether the elector has committed a misdemeanor, which deprives him of the right of giving his suffrage. This verdict is penal. Bribery committed by the member, treating, misconduct of returning officers, are all misdemeanors, and followed by punishment.

In cases of scrutiny, the election committee is a civil court. It has to adjudicate whether the elector has made out a good title to his franchise. His right depends upon a great number of incidents, acts, and facts, from which his qualification proceeds.

Now, both these courts, in which respectively the business requires a wide difference of treatment, are amalgamated together, and dealt with after the same procedure. It is true that, in either branch, the result is the same. All that the Petitioner seeks is to get his seat; he dodges and shifts his ground from the criminal to the civil side, just as the way best opens for the attainment of that end. All that the committee see in prospect is the member retaining his seat, or the member losing his seat; and they never clearly discern the great difference of the two principles by which the result of ouster or nonouster is obtained. They are always more or less in a haze. Any one who takes the trouble to watch the proceedings of committees, will observe how very widely the influence of this confusion of ideas extends.

Let us now consider the means by which the Legislature, fully acknowledging the imperfections of the court, and yet hitherto determined to retain it, attempts to make it work somewhat more satisfactorily, both to the conscience of the House and to the public opinion of the community.

In aid of the criminal jurisdiction, the Legislature has been satisfied (4 and 5 Vict. c. 57) with relieving the petitioner from the necessity of proving agency, before giving evidence of the facts by which the charge of bribery is to be sustained; and by ap

pointing

pointing, in certain cases, a public prosecutor (5 and 6 Vict. c. 102). More facility has been given to the means of discovering truth, but no additional means for enabling them to form a right judg

ment.

In the exercise of the civil jurisdiction of the committee, Parliament has attempted to aid them by establishing some means of testing the validity of the vote, before it comes to be discussed before them. And here, a great practical difficulty has arisen from the sweeping change in the fundamental principles of the elective franchise, consequent upon our semi-radical reform; and with this difficulty Parliament has now to contend.

Whatever may have been the common language of conversation, whatever may have been spoken in Parliament, whatever may have been written or printed, sung or said, our Constitution did not recognize the principle of representation of the people. Real property was represented: communities were represented; but there was no representation of masses of population, merely because they resided within a common boundary. They were to be united by something more than mere locality, by some common interest or bond. Even scot-and-lot voters, even potwallopers, only made apparent exceptions, inasmuch as those classes were originally connected with the Court Leet or the Freeborgh. There was no such thing as a mere naked right of voting. Whether this fundamental principle of the old constitution, which made the parliamentary right always the adjunct or the appurtenance of some other right or some other obligation, was beneficial or detrimental it is not our business to discuss; we notice the old order of things simply in connexion with our present practical inquiry. Under this old Constitution, the parliamentary franchise arose either from certain tenures defined, or which could be defined, by legal rules, or from the status of the voter as a member of a corporation, whose rights also were either defined, or could be defined, by legal rules. Moreover, in the latter case, the courts of common law had a very considerable jurisdiction over the Parliamentary right. It is true, that the King's Bench could not meddle with the man as a Voter at the hustings, but the Court had him in their tight grasp in his capacity of a freeman of the borough. The common-law jurisdiction of Westminster Hall goes to the very root of the old Parliamentary franchise. The mandamus makes the voter, by compelling the corporation to admit him as a burgess; and the quo warranto takes away his vote, by disfranchising him, if he has no title to the borough freedom. In dealing with the main body of electors, you could, to a great extent, guide yourselves upon the common law, or be aided by it.

On

On the other hand, the new franchise, by which the old constituency is swamped or destroyed, is made up of odds and ends. It is a complicated right, partly arising from mere casual inhabitancy or occupancy, partly from value, partly from payment, partly from time, partly from distance, and partly from acts done by other parties, over which the voter has no control; consequently, leaving you to expatiate in a wide field of uncertainty, in which you are deprived of the former legal basis. This difficulty was anticipated, though imperfectly, when the Reform Bill was framed. Hence arose the law of registration (wrongly so called), which many people were willing to consider as a scrutiny before the poll, and therefore, to a considerable extent, anticipating the labours of the committee. How entirely the so-called registry has disappointed this expectation it is unnecessary to say; and, surely, never was any scheme more inartificially devised. The task has been assigned to two sets of Registrars, primary and secondary, who botch up the so-called Register between them. The court of the Revising Barrister is a species of court of appeal from the overseers, who, at the same time, may be considered as the Barrister's ministerial officers, and yet officers over whom he has no check or control. The overseers begin the

work for the Barrister; but he is not placed over them until after their duty is performed. A duty requiring great accuracy and great labour is imposed upon a class of men, who, with whatever respect we would speak of all constituted authorities, and of the march of intelligence, are not peculiarly qualified for such a task. They are left to stumble through it without inspection, without direction, without any official superior who can assist them by his advice, or direct them by his superintendence. The functionaries, who are to perfect the so-called Register by their revision, have the name of a Court without any of its real attributes, and are constituted Judges, without any bond of unity by which consistency of jurisprudence can be preserved. Each Reviser is more than autocrat over the law, in his own fragment of a shire.

The proposed Bill seeks to diminish these evils: one portion will receive unqualified approbation; it is that which, being declaratory, will, at all events, prevent the recurrence of conflicting decisions upon certain contested points, arising out of the obscure legislation of the Reform Bill. The successive occupation of lands and tenements in Counties is not to invalidate the voter's right (§70).—Joint occupiers in Counties may vote, if the yearly rent for which they are liable, when divided by the number of such occupiers, shall give 50l. for each (§ 71).— Mortgagees not in possession are not to vote.-Trustees are not to vote ;-but the vote is to be given by the cestui qui trust, or

the

the person who is entitled to put the rents and profits of the pews of the meeting-house into his pocket, although he may receive the money through the hands of the trustees (§ 72).-Misnomers, or inaccurate descriptions of borough-voters, are not to invalidate the vote (73).-Lastly (§ 74), the great dispute between the Crow-men, or those who calculate distances as the bird flies, and the Highway-men, or those who calculate by measuring the way according to the nearest high-road, is appeased for ever. The Crow-men have it all their own way. The seven statute miles are to be measured in a straight line.

All these settlements of the law are fairly conformable to the spirit of the Reform Bill: at all events, they set matters at rest. But these declaratory enactments are not sufficiently extensive; and the framers of the Bill have not noticed some other points which are left in great uncertainty, particularly in the city of London. Shortly after the last general election (1841), a gentleman of considerable note and respectability made, in our presence, an open declaration in these terms:- My father, and our partner, and I, voted before half-past eight o'clock, our three votes being bad. We knew it, and know it; but the clerk of our company put us upon the register, and so we went to the poll accordingly.'Whether these voters were Whig, or whether they were Tory, is nothing to the purpose; any party would and will play the same game. Such bad votes have recently (August, 1842) been declared good by the revising barrister. His argument is clever and acute, but quite inconclusive. We wish his decision could be justified: but it is utterly at variance with the plain meaning of the Reform Bill; and a trap is left open, into which, unless it be closed by Parliament, some unlucky candidate will certainly fall.

The new Bill proposes that the registration process shall sustain many changes in form, but none amending its real defects. There is one alteration, however, which many will consider to be of great importance. It is well known that the existing act imposes the payment of a shilling by the claimant to the overseers. This payment keeps away many an honest man from registering, probably, when he thinks he cannot contrive to get twelve-pennyworth of good in exchange for twelve-pennyworth of silver; and, except so far as these shillings extend, all the expenses of the overseers are paid, as the act directs, out of the monies collected for the relief of the poor! At present these shillings help, in a small way, to defray the expense. But, in future, all the shillings which are to reimburse the overseers, town-clerks, and secondaries, for their trouble and outlay as electoral registrars, are to be paid out of the same monies collected for the relief of the poor!! We must also tell

Our