Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/80

 of itself void the seat." This remark is the more important that Baron Martin was the Judge who tried the petition against the return of Mr. W. H. Smith for Westminster in 1868. But the Judges experienced great difficulty in cases of exceptionally large expenditure in obtaining proof of such infraction of law as would void a seat under the statute.

There was much evidence brought before the Committee of 1869 on the subject of drunkenness at elections. But the Committee, while declaring their opinion that the closing of public-houses at elections would tend to the tranquillity and purity of elections, expressed a fear that the public inconvenience arising from such a measure would be so great as to outweigh its advantages. But three