Page:Letters of Junius, volume 1 (Woodfall, 1772).djvu/180

, It is, in all cases of election, the known and established law of the land, grounded upon the clearest principles of reason and common sense, that if the votes given to one candidate are null and void, they cannot be opposed to the votes given to another candidate; they cannot affect the votes of such candidate at all. As they have, on the one hand, no positive quality to add or establish, so have they, on the other hand, no negative one to subtract or destroy. They are, in a word, a mere non-entity. Such was the determination of the House of Commons in the Malden and Bedford elections; cases strictly in point to the present question, as far as they are meant to be in point. And to say that they are not in point in all circumstances, in those particularly which are independent of the proposition which they are quoted to prove, is to say no more than that Malden is not Middlesex, nor Serjeant Comyns Mr. Wilkes.

us see then how our proof stands. Expulsion creates incapacity, incapacity annihilates any votes given to the incapable person. The votes given to the qualified candidate