where the cases were heard, by the Commit tee of Privileges, in Committee of the Whole House, or at the bar of the House with the speaker in the chair. They were usually decided finally by a strictly partisan vote, with little or no regard to equity or fair ness as between the candidates, and with no regard to the common law rights of the English people in respect of the exercise and enjoyment of the parliamentary fran chise. The Parliamentary reformers of the period of the American Revolution imagined that they were launching an entirely new move ment when they advocated an enlarged elec torate, and the suppression of the rotten boroughs. If they had turned to the Jour nals of the House they would have learned that in scores of boroughs the movement for a wider franchise, for a return to the original scot and lot qualification of the first centuries of the House of Commons, had been going on almost from the days of the Tudors. The Journals make this clear; and in the reports of the Election Committees from the time of Glanville and Coke, as they are spread with much fullness of detail on the Commons Journals, there are some of the most valu able contemporary pictures of English munic ipal and social life to be found anywhere in English history. They have been drawn upon by the writers of Constitutional his tory, but ignored in the main by those authors who have sought to deal with social England during the last three centuries. From 1770 to 1868 when, as has been stated, election cases were sent back to the courts, they were dealt with by a small com mittee appointed for each case, and so chosen as to guarantee for both sides a fair hearing. George III strongly opposed the bill establishing these committees when it was proposed in 1770, as a temporary measure. He opposed it again in 1774, when it was made permanent. The reasons for his opposition are not far to seek. The Grenville Act made electioneering and par
liamentary management of the kind in which the king was so proficient much more diffi cult, and made the results less certain. Hence the dislike of George III to the Act. He was defeated in his opposition on both occasions; but the Letters and Memoirs of Walpole show that even after the Act, the king was not loyal to it, and at times exerted his influence to prevent a quorum being made in the House, in order that no progress might be made in the selection of a Gren ville Committee. As between candidates, the Grenville Act wrought a change im mensely for the better. In every case it did not and could not bring justice to the constituencies concerned; for the Act of Parliament as to the last determinations in election cases passed in the reign of Queen Anne, stereotyped the variety of borough franchises then existing, and effectually closed the door in most boroughs to any attempt to get the franchise back to its ancient democratic level. Occasionally there have been protests against the decisions of the election judges under the Act of 1868, and sometimes an election petition, rightly or wrongly, leaves a local feeling of injustice and soreness which lasts until the next general election. I well remember on the morning after Parlia ment was dissolved in 1874, seeing written in chalk on the walls of a Lancashire borough "No Baron Martin this time." It was the first electioneering literature locally published in that contest; and was evidently written by a supporter of the Tory candidate who had been the unsuccessful petitioner in a trial following the general election of 1868. As a rule, however, people in England accept the decision of the judges in these cases with out much criticism. The parliamentary in quiry held this session may result in some recommendations for the shortening of elec tion trials and economizing law costs; but no one for a moment entertains the idea that election petitions will be taken again out of the hands of the judges.
