Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/79

 quantity of drink on the day of polling, and the state in which many voters were alleged to have come up to vote, were perfectly scandalous; they were so drunk in two or three cases that they did not know who they came to vote for." The three Judges appointed for the trial of election petitions all recommended an enactment that extravagant or unreasonable expenditure should vacate a seat. Mr. Justice Blackburn suggested that any expenditure exceeding five shillings a-head should for this purpose be declared unreasonable.

I have stated that Mr. John Stuart Mill, who like Colonel Thompson would not expend a farthing in bribery, was defeated in 1868 at Westminster, for which he had sat since 1865, by Mr. W. H. Smith. Baron Martin, one of the three Judges appointed for the trial of election petitions, when his advice was asked by the Parliamentary Committee on this point of expenditure at elections, said: "I think it well worthy of consideration whether there should not be an enactment that extravagant general expenditure, and I will limit it to that, should void the seat; whether £7000 at Bradford, or £9000 at Westminster, should not