initiate, on their behalf, the proceedings necessary to obtain a new constitution. It would be, moreover, highly inconvenient, that the Parliament should be required to interpose its powers on every occasion. The principle by which such local divisions are to be constituted, separated, or reconstructed, should be settled once for all, and then applied through the constitutional exercise of the royal prerogative, as the established laws are administered through the judicial authority of the Crown.
A law under which new electoral divisions might be formed, as occasion should require, is suggested in the following outline of the fifth clause of the proposed electoral law:—
V. Any borough, and any parish or district or division of a parish or other parochial division, and any ward or other division of a city, town, or borough, and any hundred, wapentake, or other division of a county, and any body, college, or society incorporate, may, in pursuance of a resolution agreed to by a majority of the electors in such community, at a meeting convened and held after due notice, apply to her Majesty in Council, by petition, signed by the chairman of such meetings praying that such borough, parish, division, or body, may be empowered to return a member to represent the same in Parliament, and that a writ for such purpose may be issued accordingly at future general elections; and such petition shall state who it is proposed shall be the returning officer, and where it is proposed that such election shall take plaoe, and what hall or public building it is proposed to provide for the same, and the situation of the other polling-places, if any, which it is proposed to provide, and in what manner it is proposed that the expenses of such elections, and of the registration and record of voters, and other the incidental expenses of such separate representation shall be borne; and upon the hearing of the said petition, of which not less than three months' notice shall be given in the London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Gazettes respectively; and also upon the hearing of any person or persons, who may apply and be admitted to be heard in opposition to the petition, under such regulations as shall be made in that behalf,—if it shall appear to Her Majesty in Council to be proper to accede to the prayer of the petition, and to grant to such borough, parish, division, or body, a charter of incorporation (if the same be not already incorporated), it shall be lawful for Her Majesty in Council to order that at all future general elections a writ shall be issued for the summoning of such borough, parish, division, or body, to return a member to serve in Parliament, and to prescribe who shall be the returning officer, and any other special rules which may appear to be necessary for the due exercise of such powers; and the said borough, parish, division, or body
