232

T/ie Green Bag.

corruption. This took the form of with holding the writ, a course of action freely adopted when the parliamentary committees before 1868, and the judges of the High Court after that year, reported to the House that a borough was more than ordinarily corrupt. The Reform Act of 1884, with the Redis tribution of Seats Act of 1885, did more to lessen the election work of the judges than all the other electoral legislation since 1832. The small boroughs which, as their history between 1832 and 1885 made plain, had undeservedly escaped in 1832, were in 1885 thrown into the newly made county divi sions. They ceased to be under the ener vating and demoralizing patronage of the territorial aristocracy, or of the wealthy can didates for their suffrages. They ceased to be the plague spots of the electoral system. The Act of 1884 and 1885, with the existing Corrupt Practices Act, which preceded them by a year, lessened enormously the work of the judges, so far as the number of election petitions was concerned. These three acts — making household suffrage uniform in boroughs and counties, throwing the small towns into the county electoral areas, and penalizing corruption — tended at once to reduce the number of petitions. They made no change, however, as regards the duration of the petition trials; nor as concerns the legal expenses attending a petition case. Although the borough and county constitu encies of England elect 495 of the 670 members of the House of Commons, after the general election of 1895 not more than nine or ten petitions were heard by the judges. Still these cases involved enor mous expenses to the candidates concerned, and they have given rise to a feeling that, the experience of centuries notwithstanding, a reasonably inexpensive and that at the same time expeditious method of dealing with election petitions has still to be devised. It is curious how, in the matter of election petition trials, as in other .constitutional

usages and practices, things work around as it were in a circle. Four centuries ago, as the statute books and literature like the Paston Letters show, controverted elections were tried much in the same way as they are to day. They were dealt with then by the judges of assize, who heard them as the judges of the High Court nowadays do, in the counties where the disputed elections oc curred. In those days, however, cases of disputed returns were comparatively rare. In the first two hundred years of its exist ence, few men were anxious to serve in the House of Commons. Service in Parliament, in the Lords as well as the Commons, was then regarded as burdensome; as con cerned the Commons, by both elected and electors. Constituents were frequently ready to shirk electing either county or borough members, in order that they might save themselves the local charges for knights' and burgesses' wages. When members were chosen, bonds had to be entered into for their due appearance in Parliament much in the same way that witnesses are bound over to attend trials at quarter sessions or assizes. In the early days of the House of Commons there were few men who would put them selves to the expense of contesting in the courts their right to an election; but that such cases occasionally occurred in the fif teenth century, can be learned from the Paston Letters, which throw so much light on the political and social life of the period they cover. Later on, disputed elections were deter mined in Chancery; then in Elizabeth's time the Commons claimed the right of deter mining elections. Early in James I 's reign this right was insisted upon; and from 1604 to 1868, when election cases were returned to the courts, the Commons never parted with the right they had wrested from the Crown. For the first century or so after it was. obtained, it was one of the most valued rights of the House of Commons. As long as the Stuart dynasty lasted, it was next to