Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/552

 538 IV. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY consideration in the political world are too often studiously excluded from it." " We do not exaggerate," observes the Law Magazine of 1837, " when we say, that during the last two or three sessions none but the uninitiated ever dreamed of supposing that the right to a disputed seat would be de- cided by the merits of the case." In 1838, a writer in Eraser calculates that there had been ten Whig committees, and that they had decided in every case in favour of Whig members. In the session of 1838, twenty- four Whig committees, it was alleged, had defeated petitions against twenty Whigs and unseated six Tories, while they had only unseated two Whigs and dismissed two Whig petitions. During the like period, sixteen Tory committees appeared to have dismissed peti- tions against four Tories and unseated eight Whigs, while two Tories only were unseated and two Tory petitions were unsuccessful. Before the system was ultimately abolished a growing sense of public duty had substantially curtailed its gravest abuses, but the judicial vindication of electoral purity ought, like Cassar's wife, to be above suspicion. The House of Commons, while reserving to itself the formal shadow of supreme jurisdiction, has at last delegated to the judges of the land the duty of dealing with these election controversies; and, in addition to the exacter justice thus secured, it is some advantage to the public that election petitions are now tried in the locality where the transactions have occurred. A similar change as regards a variety of private Bills, whose success or failure ought to depend upon evidence alone, is only as yet in the air. Private Bills con- tinue to be referred to Select Committees of five — an insti- tution which has, however, undergone considerable improve- ments during the reign. There is reason to hope, that the functions imposed upon the judges of dealing with electoral petitions are destined as time progresses to became light. After the hotly contested election of 1886 only one single election petition was set down for trial in her Majesty's English courts, where the election turned upon a scrutiny. All these jurisdictions, all these scattered duties, as the reign progressed were gathered together by degrees and entrusted to courts sitting in Westminster Hall.