Complete Election Guide

savouring of objection to the construction of parts of the Act, which has been very unequally, though

respect of a qualification declared to be insufficient to qualify for

a town.

The oversight, if there be any, seems to be in not sufficiently attending to the effect of using the word occupy. In the qualifying clause (Section 27) occupation is made necessary to qualification, and registration to voting. In the first of the four restrictive provisoes, previous duration of occupation is made necessary to registration; occupation being so made a condition of qualification, there is no provision that property in habitable premises or buildings, situate in boroughs, &c., not occupied by the owner, shall qualify for counties, where the owner occupies another habitation or place of business in the borough, which would qualify him for that borough.

Thus occupation, which was clearly meant to be only (amongst others) a condition ENTITLING an occupier to regisration, will be attempted to be made the means of BARRING the right of an owner not occupying to be registered in respect of the same property. This will be put on the ground that had he occupied he might have registered, but that not having occupied, he is not qualified to register, and not being qualified to register as he might have, but has not made himself by actual occupation, he has not acquired, as he could have done, the right of voting for the particular borough, and therefore shall not vote for either borough or county in right of that particular property.

Now the question will be, whether such exclusion from county election of members was meant or is enacted by the legislature or not?

In the case of copyhold and leasehold property the exclusion is still more clear and much more comprehensive.

The 25th section, as to copyholders and leaseholders, very considerably extends the disqualifying enactment of the 24th, for it does not even require that the property being a house, (&c.) in a borough, in respect of his estate or interest in which the owner is to be qualified for a borough, and therefore shall not vote for knights of the shire, shall be " occupied by himself," as the preceding clause does; but it goes also much further in another very material respect, by providing that such property shall not confer a qualification on the owner or entitle him to vote at elections for members of shires if it be such as would (or might) according to the provisions of the act (s. 27,) confer a right of voting for the city or borough in which it should be, on him or on any other person, whether he or such other person shall or shall not have qualified himself to vote for such borough.

The consequence would be that no copyhold or lease hold property

for the most part admirably drawn, will be found to occur in the Commentary. These have been necessarily, though reluctantly, made, where the imperfect wording of clauses has either been inadequate to the obvious purpose of the framers of the Bill, or has obscured their meaning even to the danger of defeating the intention of the authors of the measure.

It could not be within the reach of hope, still less of expectation, that on such a subject, so Colossal, a law should emerge at once a perfect Chrysolite complete in all its parts and most minute proportions.

In this first detail of the practical means and uses of the projected amendment, there are omissions of necessary matter and an occasional obscurity in some of the provisions which have been introduced that must be regretted; but these may be yet amended when experience shall have shown the evil and dictated the remedy.

The necessity of a revision of the fabric for the

situate in any city or borough or other place sending a member or members to serve in parliament, can qualify by estate a voter for a knight of the shire if he (the owner) do not occupy it himself, nor does it qualify him to vote for a candidate for parliament in respect of such property any where, whether the place be county, city, or borough.

The question will be, again, whether this distinction, or the operative effect of it was foreseen and meant or not? It appears to be unreasonable, and if so should be remedied, as it easily may be by simply providing that the first of the four restrictive provisions shall not operate to disqualify, as a consequence of omitting to register, clearly meant to apply only to and to result from the other three.

If this cavil should hold, it will very largely disqualify-and probably much more so than was intended.

restructure of defective parts in the mere masonry of this legislative Pyramid, is widely acknowledged: and to this end the urgent recommendation of a great and staunch friend of Reform in his day may here be aptly cited as matter of wholesome suggestion.

Alluding to the necessity of some reformation in the existing System of the Law, to which, with all its imperfections, no man could be more sincerely attached than that devout venerator of the legal institutions of his Country-the learned Lord Coke thus concludes with a religious reverence the colophon of his laboured Treatise on the Constitution of our Courts. Having most ably delineated the detailed proportions of the fair but faulty Pile, he

says,

I shall heartily desire the wise-hearted and expert builders (justice being architectonica virtus) to amend both the method or uniformity, and the structure itselfe, wherein they shall finde either want of windowes or sufficient lights, or other deficiency in the architecture whatsoever. And we will conclude with the aphorisme of that great lawyer and sage of the law, which we have often heard him say,Blessed be the amending hand.'