PARLIAMENTARY ELECTION MANUAL: A Practical Handbook on the Law and Conduct of STEVENS AND SONS, LIMITED, 119 & 120, CHANCERY LANE, Law Publishers. THE General Election of 1892 was remarkable for the number and importance of the election petitions to which it gave rise. Upon the trial of these petitions many vital questions of election law were raised and discussed, and various passages of the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Act, 1883, received authoritative interpretation. The time from which candidature may be said to begin and election expenses to run; the subscriptions by candidates to the funds of local clubs without due inquiry into the objects of their expenditure; the agency of 'associations political and nonpolitical; treating in various modern forms by local societies and party leagues; marks of distinction ; canvassing; mode of marking votes; inadvertence, its meaning and limits; the power of the Courts to grant relief and the effect of relief so granted; these and other questions too numerous to recapitulate came under the review of the election judges for the time being, and were more or less exhaustively treated. In considering how the mass of judicial opinion. and decision involved might best be incorporated, it appeared to the Author that the most convenient and useful mode of dealing with the mattter would be to classify it, and to append the results in the form of notes to the various sections of the Act to which they respectively applied. In pursuing this course, it further occurred to the Author that the value of this portion of his Work would be greatly increased if he extended his survey so as to include within it the whole body of cases which have been determined since the Act of 1883 came into operation. This has been done, and the Author hopes that this portion of the Work will be found to comprise a complete and trustworthy presentment of the law comprised in that Act and the cases bearing upon it. It may here be mentioned that, to make it as complete as possible, the Author has drawn not only upon the reports of O'Malley and Hardcastle, but also upon verbatim reports of the Irish cases published in Dublin and upon the Parliamentary Return of Controverted English Elections, in which points are dealt with that do not appear in O'Malley and Hardcastle. The value of this portion of the Work, not only to the lawyer but to the electioneer as well, may be gauged from the remark of Mr. Justice Cave in The Stepney Case, to the effect that an election agent is bound to acquaint himself with the decisions of the Courts. In addition the Author has endeavoured to explain the duties of the Public Prosecutor or his representative upon the trial of a petition by quotations from the expressed opinions of election judges; and, further, to indicate the manner in which the Courts are likely to exercise the discretion with regard to costs with which they are invested by a statement of the mode in which their discretion has been exercised in the past. He has further incorporated in the text of the Manual where it seemed desirable to do so the lessons and warnings to be derived from the petitions tried since the First Edition of this Work appeared. The Corrupt and Illegal Practices Prevention Act, 1895, illustrated with notes from the judgments in the cases under the Act, has also been appended. So much new matter must necessarily have greatly increased the bulk of the book and rendered it less conveniently portable had not the Author, with a view to preserve this feature, which was one of its original recommendations, cut out here and there passages of little or no practical utility. In making these excisions the Author believes it will be found that nothing of real value has been sacrificed. 2, GARDEN COURT, TEMPLE. September, 1900. |