the fact to the Speaker, so that the date might be official. For bye-elections the day of application for the writ seems to be the earliest which could really be taken as official.
6. In order still further to prevent expenditure, and strictly to limit expenses under each individual head, it is proposed by some—and the proposal is included in the new Corrupt Practices Bill—to lay down a Maximum Scale of Expenditure, proportionate to the number of electors, making it illegal to expend a penny beyond the sums mentioned in a schedule. I do not believe in the advisability or practicability of this proposal. However much one may approve the principle of a maximum scale, one cannot disguise from oneself the difficulty, nay the impossibility of putting it into practice.
The objections to any scale seem to be as follows:—
(i.) A different scale would be required in counties and boroughs. A higher scale of expenditure would be required for straggling, than that which would be necessary in compact constituencies.
(ii.) As some election contests are short and some are prolonged, a fixed scale would permit an extravagant expenditure at one time, and unduly limit expenditure at another. A sliding scale adapted for varying lengths of contest would be impossible of conception.
(iii.) No scale could be made to work fairly in the case of both joint and single candidatures; however much modified, it would be too liberal in the one case, or too niggardly in the other.
(iv.) The candidate who had exceeded his limit—no unlikely occurrence—would be obliged either to make a false return and so break the law a second time, or else, by giving a correct return, at once subject himself to pains and penalties.
(v.) A maximum scale would inevitably tend to become the minimum scale of expenditure for all elections.
Practically it would be found impossible to invent a workable scale which would be fair all round, and unless the scale were equally applicable to every constituency, it would be inexpedient to legalise it. I believe that a sworn return of expenditure, and a limitation of employment, etc., would be a self-adapting and sufficient check on extravagance, even though no scale of maximum expenditure were laid down.
