Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/205

 the kingdom should be the same. The convenience of persons having votes as well in counties as in a borough, or corporate constituency, may be provided for in a manner hereafter suggested.

The votes should be taken at polling places opened in every parish, and if the parish be very large and populous, at several places in the same parish. If it be populous, but not of any wide extent, a larger staff of clerks at one place might be sufficient.

It is plain that a system of registration, having any pretensions to be adapted to its true purposes, facilitating the business of the election, distinguishing between those whose qualifications have ceased and those which continue,—between the living and the dead,—must be a registration effected by different means, having for its basis the residence of the voter, and not the place of qualification only. It is in no way necessary that expense should be incurred in the erection of polling-booths. There are few parishes on the kingdom which do not contain some building applicable to a public use, as, for example, a school-room, which, without inconvenience, could be used for one day. If, in a few remote places, such a loom or building could not be found, there would be no difficulty in hiring some room in a public or