claim, although no objector should appear; and in case of any wilful mis-statement, he should incur a very heavy penalty, to be recovered by summary process, for the benefit of the informer. In place, therefore, of the registry, there should be a court of admission,' of which the judge shall ex officio be bound to sift the title of the claimants; and this court of admission' should be held before a functionary of the same rank and station as the revising barrister: one or more to be appointed for each county, who should make circuits through the different unions. With the minor details it is not necessary to trouble our readers. The expense will, probably, not greatly exceed the charges now incurred; yet, if it does, there will be no reason to grudge it, although the money may come-not from the poor-rates but from the consolidated fund. And the court of appeal from the court of admission would be the Judges of Westminster Hall, as before proposed. The next step would be, to give the most efficient powers for having a scrutiny at the time of the election, at the option of the defeated party; and that, not at his expense, so far as the payment of the assessor, clerks, and other officers is concerned, but at the public expense. It is not a private affair. The correctness of the return is really and truly a public concern. The present Bill (79) declares that no scrutiny shall be henceforth allowed. This, we apprehend, is a most mistaken course. The denial of a scrutiny deprives parliament, and the party, of one of the most efficient and convenient remedies. The bringing justice to every man's door used to be the pride of the English constitution. Conduct your inquiry upon the spot, whilst the matter is fresh, and a great number of the questions by which the time of committees is wasted and worn, such as personation, change of residence, and so on, will be immediately and satisfactorily determined. One of the greatest impediments to committee investigations is the enormous expense attending the giving of evidence. An efficient scrutiny will intercept the expense; and instead of the tremendous avanie inflicted upon the petitioner, by the need of keeping and cooping the witnesses for weeks and weeks in the hotels in Palace Yard, the whole inquiry may be perfected when the parties have been naturally brought together for the purpose of the election. Lastly, we arrive at the court of ultimate resort, the court which is to decide upon the validity of the returns. Can any one, after the failure of all the various amendments in the mode of forming the Committee, expect that any means of correcting its defects will succeed? And may we not rather hope that, when the House of Commons calmly consider the question, they will see the propriety propriety of giving up the fancy-for it is nothing more-which makes them suppose that, because they elect the members of the election committee, they are exercising any jurisdiction over elections? In fact, they are exercising none. They have, so long as the Grenville system prevails, divested themselves of all jurisdiction. How strangely are wise men deluded by words! It is true, the members of the committee sit in a room belonging to the House, and they report their decisions to the House. But the House, as a distinct branch of the legislature, has absolutely departed with all that constitutes jurisdiction. The House gives no one power to the overseers, no one power to the revising barristers, no one power to the committee. The House has no authority to judge of the return. When the election committee is once nominated, the committee is as completely severed from the House of Commons, as the Court of Vice-Chancellor Knight Bruce. The election committee is not a committee of the House of Commons. The House, by the Speaker, issues process for the committee; but in so doing, or when they order the clerk of the crown to attend with the writ and to amend the return, the acts, whether of House or Speaker, with whatever form they may be clothed, are simply ministerial. The House is the officer of the committee, and nothing more: the jurisdiction of the committee does not proceed from the House of Commons, but, like that of Vice-Chancellor Knight Bruce, from King, Lords, and Commons. The committee is no more a House of Commons tribunal than the Vice-Chancellor's Court. They have no more to do with the Report made upon the petition, than they have with the equity decree: they have entirely abdicated all power therein. This was clearly and forcibly shown by Mr. Dyson, in the debate upon the Grenville Bill. He 'objected first, as the mode was novel and contrary to the usage and custom of parliament, and inconsistent with the constitution thereof, that the House, by coming into such a proposal of establishing a committee, WHICH WAS TO DECIDE INDEPENDENT OF THE JUDGMENT OF THE HOUSE, DID NOT DIvest itself OF THE POWERS ESSENTIAL TO IT AND ITS JURIS DICTION, but that the doing it by act of oath† was still more dangerous. That this doing it by an act, so far as it had a tendency to render the House of Commons dependent on the other branches of legislature in the exercise of its judicial powers, and particularly in matters of its own exclusive rights and privileges, had a direct tendency to destroy the balance of power between the several branches of parliament, and must so far obstruct the freedom and even existence of parliament: that therefore, if he could see removed the insurmountable objections which lay in the way of the mode of the proposal, he could yet never give his consent to the doing it by Act of Parliament. That he disapproved the several *Something is wanting here-perhaps the word 'only:' but, as we have before observed, the whole is reported with wonderful slovenliness. + Sic: qu. both? regulations regulations proposed, some as impracticable, others as inefficient: he thought the various regulations prescribed for the forming the committee, as proposed in the bill, intricate and impracticable, and gave his reasons in the particular discussion of each: he said further, that he thought that partiality might creep into this committee equally as well as exist in the House at large, especially by means of the two additional members to be nominated by the parties. He was apprehensive that some of these regulations might draw into dangerous consequences, which the House was no longer at liberty, or had the power, to remedy, when it should once thus have delegated its judicial power to a court, to be formed by Act of Parliament.'—Debrett, vol. xxvii. p. 282. Mr. Welbore Ellis took the same ground with equal emphasis: he said That the idea of reverting to the old parliamentary system of trials by a select committee did not hold on this plan; for there, though the committee tried, the House determined: whereas, in this bill, the determination of the committee was final. That the trial of controverted elections might be as well referred to the twelve judges, as to such AN INDEPENDENT COURT (FOR I WILL NOT CALL IT A COMMITTEE) as this bill proposes, secluded by Act of Parliament from all communications with the House. That this proposed measure was very material—it was an essential alteration of the constitution of parliament-A TOTAL ABROGA TION OF ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT RIGHTS AND JURISDICTIONS OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. That he doubted whether the representatives chosen under the possession of these rights, and having and using the exercise of the jurisdiction which they had always used in matters of disputed elections, he doubted,' he said, whether they could give them up.'-Debrett, vol. xxvii. p. 294. But they have given them up. The rights and jurisdictions are abrogated. And at this present moment, all that the House of Commons gains by adhering to what they suppose to be their privilege is, that the validity of the return is tried by an independent court, composed of seven gentlemen, each of whom enjoys the privileges of being permitted to eat his beef-steak at Bellamy's, and of receiving his prepaid letters post free, he being addressed with M.P. tacked to his name. Mr. Sheil, we believe, has suggested that a master in chancery, added as an assessor, might give more stability to the Committee; but such an assessor would naturally end by being everything. Like Mr. Hobler at the Mansion House, who is perpetual Lord Mayor, so would the assessor absorb the committee; and we believe that no efficient mode will be found of remedying the present most defective state of the law, except by considering how the two branches of jurisdiction, which, as we have before mentioned, exist in the committee, can each be separately dealt with by a separate form of process. Both should be brought before a regular tribunal, composed at least in part of the commonlaw Judges. Perhaps there should be special circuits for par liamentary liamentary purposes only; and these should take place between the elections and the sitting of the Parliament. (We believe something like this was suggested by Sir Robert Inglis and opposed by Mr. Williams Wynne.) As the law now stands, the fate of a ministry, or of the succession, or of the constitution, might be decided by members illegally returned by gross corruption, by intimidation, by barefaced violence. We will not say that any thing like this ever really occurred, but it might; and Parliament should look to it whilst they have the power. The Commissioners in each commission should sit as a Bench of Four. We should see no objections to putting any other competent persons in the parliamentary commissions in addition to the Judges, nor to this being done by a vote of the House in the preceding parliament. In this case, each member should only be entitled to vote for half the number of commissioners required,—an excellent mode of protecting the interests of the minority; and which, by the way, we would apply to all municipal and parochial elections. Possibly, some of the forms of the common law might require to be modified; but such is the wonderful good sense and consistency of its system-once so prized, and now in fast progress towards becoming as obsolete as the Dooms of Ethelbert and Ina-that no real difficulty would be found in adapting them to the peculiar cases which arise under election laws. And we may add more-we believe, and we make the assertion most deliberately-that there is hardly a single secular want of our present age, which the common law system, wisely expounded, would not supply. Let only those who are engaged upon the task, endeavour to be enabled to reject all party politics, all conventional language, and, without slavishly adhering to the forms of our ancient jurisprudence, attempt to guide themselves by its reason-and all may yet be well. NOTE.-A friend, from whom we have received many valuable suggestions and much useful advice, and whom we would most gladly quote by name if etiquette permitted us so to do, is still of opinion that a good tribunal might be formed by a paid Committee of the House of Commons. Four members from each side of the House to sit de die in diem-and in case of equality of votes, each of the four in rotation to have the casting vote; but with an appeal in all cases in which the Committee is not unanimous to another Committee appointed in like manner-members of either Committee to deliver their judgments as judges in open Court, with their reasons-with, on difficult questions of law or evidence, power to state a case, as the Lord Chancellor does, for the opinion and certificate of any of the Superior Courts in the manner before suggested. We give this opinion because it results from one who has had very great practical experience; but we object to the casting-vote; and we cannot help preferring the scheme which we have suggested, of taking the matter wholly out of the walls of the House, and adjudicating on the spot by Parliamentary circuits, as above proposed besides which the Committee plan does not provide a remedy for what we consider the greatest evil, namely, the opening of the Parliament without a previous verification of the powers of the members. ART. ART. X. American Notes, for General Circulation. WE By E heartily wish-and for more reasons than are at first sight obvious-that the morbid sensibility of our TransAtlantic cousins to the opinion of English visitors could be moderated. We wish it for our own sakes as well as theirs, for it imparts to all their intercourse with us-whether literary or political-a jealous aspect and a captious spirit, painful to themselves, and therefore embarrassing to us. If we were disposed to flatter our own national pride, we might represent it as a kind of involuntary tribute to our superior taste and judgment--but it is a tribute of such dubious value that we would willingly waive all claim to it it not enricheth us, And makes them poor indeed.' The truth is, that instead of being the result of any rational deference or good will towards the father-land, it has a very opposite origin, and tends to directly contrary results. It seems at first sight somewhat unreasonable that Americans of education and good manners should feel so painfully, as they certainly do, criticisms on those other classes which must in all countries be expected to exhibit some coarse peculiarities-why should they be more offended at such observations than French or English gentlemen are at exhibitions of the manners of La Rapée or Wapping? The true explanation is, we believe, that this susceptibility is a natural effect of their political institutions. The principle of universal equality tends not only to make society very miscellaneous, but it creates a feeling of co-partnership, as it were, among all ranks of Americans in the results, whether good or bad, which foreigners may attribute to that fundamental doctrine of democracy. And this, on the other hand, is one of the chief motives of the peculiar interest which the English public take in the working of the social machine in the United States. The curiosity on one side, and the soreness on the other, on many topics apparently very trifling, have a deeper root than any kind of personal jealousy; they are in fact indications of that natural and, we will say, laudable anxiety with which all mankind are now watching every step of the great experimental contest between democratical and monarchical government. It is not, therefore, as the Americans are too apt to suppose, any personal animosity, nor any desire to disparage their individual qualities, that sharpens the curiosity and criticism with which Englishmen are disposed to look at their social system; nor can they reasonably |