OF THE Hustings and Poll Booths, BEING A MANUAL OF THE LAW GOVERNING THE ELECTION. BY GEORGE WINGROVE COOKE, OF THE MIDDLE TEMPLE, BARRISTER AT LAW. LONDON: V. & R. STEVENS AND G. S. NORTON, 25, BELL YARD, LINCOLN'S INN. 1857. PREFACE. THIS little handbook does not aspire to rank as a professional treatise on the law of elections; nor do I wish that it should be relied upon as all-sufficient in points of difficult legal controversy. Having occasion to look closely into the statutes that confer and regulate the exercise of the electoral franchise, I found them more multifarious and more incongruous than I had before believed. I thought, therefore, that at this conjuncture I might perform an office of humble utility, by simplifying, for the use of candidates, returning officers, and voters, those acts, and fragments of partially-repealed acts, which create their rights and liabilities. Legislation upon this subject is so constant and so spasmodic, that our large legal treatises halt behind it. When I undertook this little work there was none which shewed the law as it is. The Editors of Mr. Roger's work have at length overtaken it by a new edition: but as |