Appended to the Act so dissected and displayed is an analytical Commentary, embracing, comprehensively and succinctly, the principles and practice of the new Election Law, with a minute reference to every sentence of the statute, calculated to establish the accuracy or expose the errors of the explanatory passages.

The Commentary is composed of propositions for guidance in practice, made up of the various and often numerous provisions, applying to one and the same subject, found scattered in disjointed and distant clauses of the Act, but here collected together and united and arranged under the proper head or topic to which each fairly belongs.*

Thus the several Sections of the Commentary are confined to single subjects, following progressively, yet not servilely and inconsequently, the provisions of the Act, but as each step is to be taken in order of time, from the first necessary to registration down to the last measure required to mature the right to exercise the Elective Franchise, and the course of appealing from the adjudication of the revising barrister to the House of Commons.

The several pages of the Act are all headed with a running title of the substantial matter of the contents of each, and the statute and the Commentary

For example, in stating the first Qualification of Voters for Knights of Shires, numbered 1 in page 12, the incidents positive and negative are supplied from no less than five several Sections of distinct provisions in different parts of the Act.

are made to refer mutually to and from each other, wherever on the one hand the treatise explains or expounds the Sections of the Act, and where on the other the Commentary is sanctioned and justified by the terms of the Statute.

The mere wording of the Statute has been advisedly varied, and other language has been used, with a view to explain and enlarge the meaning of the Legislature, instead of coasting cautiously along each separate enactment in the very course and in the very terms of the Act.

In executing the design of this undertaking brevity has been mainly consulted. The Act itself is given at large and in full, lest any omission should give to that most inestimable work the semblance of an abridgment; or the forms and Schedules and the provisions merely temporary and no longer of use would have been omitted.

Respect for authority has induced the preservation of the Directions to Overseers from the Office of Secretary of State for the Home Department.

The Order in Council making a temporary alteration in the dates of the proceedings for the present year, has however been excluded; because it is but temporary and has already partly passed away; and because the change it has effected may be stated and disposed of in one sentence, simply by observing that the times appointed by the statute for every act of duty required at the hands of official agents have been, for the year 1832, postponed to the

same numerical days of the month next after that which had been appointed for each.

The short forms prescribed have been introduced into the body of the analytical Commentary, although printed as originally in the Act; because, occupying as they do but very little space, they convey too much practical information to be referred to in a distantly detached Appendix.

To the new Law promulgated by the Act has been added the substance of the existing Laws of Election, preserved by express provision. That has been done to make this compendium a complete guide to general election business in all its progressive stages.

Such is the substance of the plan and object of the present publication, in which the practical utility of a dissection of the Act, aided by a commentary on its application, for the purposes of election business, has been alone consulted.

Of the principle and political character of the radical change effected by the passing of this law, in the long-rooted practice and system of returning members to Parliament, various sentiments have been from time to time expressed, as interest, or prejudice, or reason, has alternately dictated, but the supporters of the measure have obtained a very large majority of the suffrages of the nation, and it is sufficient to say the measure has been carried.

The Bill, on which this Act of Parliament is founded, has been denounced by some as an attack

upon the constitution of the Country-an invasion on corporate rights-and the first overt act of a cherished design to effect a revolution in the State of the Kingdom.

But now that it is become the Lex scripta of the Land, it behoves us all, as good Subjects, to believe that it is no further an attack upon the constitution of the Country than every necessary sanative medicament is to a certain extent and for a given time an attack upon the natural constitution of Man, of which, knowing the temporary nature of the immediate disorder occasioned by the remedy, it would be puerile and perversely peevish to complain.

Amputation and pruning are corporate invasions, but submission to such invasions on corporate rights is often a most necessary sacrifice to the soundness of the state of the body or to the fructification which gives worth and utility to existence. In this instance, moreover, the decayed limbs of the tree here severed from the trunk, have been replaced by engrafting on the parent stock other and more vigorous shoots of most auspicious promise.

If the new Law be truly characterised as revolutionary, let us hope that it portends no other than such as is that planetary revolution of the Earth, made necessary by the benignant laws of Nature to its permanent preservation—a revolution whereby it derives from the solar influence and power an equal distribution of the common good of light and heat shed liberally and impartially amongst all who inhabit therein-and as that secures to the terres

tial body the maintenance of a due position in its proper sphere, may this preserve to the body politic of the Country the high station and prosperous course it has long sustained in the political system of the Nations of Europe.

Some unavoidable but well-meant remarks,*

*From repugnance to the ungracious task of pointing out defective or apparently deficient provisions in this Statute, the writer has abstained, even more than warranted by the exigencies of the duty he has thus volunteered, from so irksome a part of its performance.

It may however lead to a material amendment, to direct attention to the two first of the three non obstante Sections, (24, 25, 26,) restrictive of the right of voting in respect of property in the election of Knights of the Shire, in order to effect the removal of all ground for cavil-no mean desideratum-in the constructive operation of this generous act of Parliament.

The first of those clauses may perhaps be said to have negatived that right, without any modification or exception, where the qualifying freehold property of the elector is a house (&c.) in any borough of such value as would qualify him for voting for the borough, provided he should acquire the right to vote for such borough not by occupation but in the other respects required by the Act, (that is, should qualify himself for voting by registering the property, &c. for such borough,) whether he shall have done so or not.

It is much to be feared that this clause will be contended, not without some show of reason, or at least of plansibility, to exclude the owners of all freehold houses, &c. in boroughs, and of land held and occupied therewith, whether occupied or not by the owner, inasmuch as it was at any time and at all times competent to him to qualify himself in respect of such houses, and to acquire, if he had thought proper to do so, a right of voting for the city or borough by means of the four qualifying requisites made necessary to his competency by the four provisions of the 27th Section of the Statute, that is, by occupying it, (&c.)

If that be so, what becomes of the operative effect of the clause entitling freeholders, &c. in county towns and cities, generally, to vote for Knights of those Shires which topographically include them?

This is the more inconsistent with the general provisions of the Act, as if on the other hand the freehold property should not be of sufficient value, or the owner should have an insufficient estate therein to give him a right to vote in a borough, town or city, or city county, the owner may then vote for a knight of a county or shire in