hands of private parties, experienced professional agents cannot by compromises, to the mutual satisfaction of their several clients, draw the curtain on all irregularities and corrupt practices, quite as effectually as was done with the election petitions of old.

Looking to all the circumstances, it seems inevitable that further legislation to secure regularity and check corrupt practices at our Parliamentary Elections is immediately called for, and the fresh disclosures which are every day made as to the more extensive corruption which is practised at municipal elections seem to call for a remedy, not by way merely of occasional local application, but one which shall effectually deal with the disease and renovate the system.

We have already proposed such a remedy, and we now recur to it. Let us, in lieu of the present practice of the returning officers' proceedings being a mere form, and all questions of the validity of his return being left to be dealt with at the discretion merely of the candidates and their agents, require all questions affecting the validity of the election to be disposed of before the return is made.

A provision to this effect would effectually preclude the present costly and unsatisfactory inquiries on Election Petitions, and it would substitute, in a matter of so much public moment, official for merely private action. The prescribed ordeal would serve to bring to light at once and on the spot all the sinister doings at the election, and would go farther. It would infallibly deter the agents of corruption and prevent the national evils which now have on every occasion to be dealt with merely as private grievances.

Our readers will remember that our plan consists in providing at every election for a sufficient investigation, supervision, or scrutiny by the returning officer, with the aid of competent assessors, before making his return.

The course we suggest is very simple. Let the sheriff's appointed assessor be empowered immediately after each election

to enter on a supervision of the proceedings. Let due provision be made by law for securing the attendance at such an investigation of all necessary parties, keeping the inquiry open so long and no longer than the circumstances of each case warranted; further let us have provisions for visiting with costs those who are the real cause of delay and expense, and there will be little difficulty in ensuring a system of investigation, at once inexpensive and thoroughly efficacious. We have in a former number* sketched a Bill for carrying out these suggestions, but no doubt many useful amendments might be introduced.

One thing is proved by the recent inquiries, and by the strong remarks of the learned judges already referred to, viz., that it would be better, instead of the presiding officer in the local inquiries disposing at once in all cases of both the law and facts, that provision should be made for the facts being, where necessary, reduced into the form of a case, for the law of Westminster Hall to be afterwards deliberately applied to that case by the judges.

Let us now deal with the objections which have been made to this.

It has been urged that the expense of such proceedings by the returning officer would be serious, and that it would be a hardship on candidates, the validity of whose return is not now called in question, that they should be subject to any such ordeal. It has been further said that the delay in the return of the writ in undisputed cases, would be productive of unnecessary inconvenience. None of these objections, however, will be found to have any real force.

The delay and the cost of such an inquiry in honest undisputed elections would be very inconsiderable, and would be amply compensated for by the advantage both to the public and the bonâ fide candidate in ensuring fair play and checking previous expenses, whilst, in contested cases, such an

*Law Magazine and Law Review, August, 1866.

inquiry on the spot, immediately after the events occurred, could not fail to have the advantage over both the old system and that called into existence by the Act of last year, in point of cost, expedition, and general efficacy.

ART. IX.-CORONERS' ELECTION LAW.

HE contest for the coronership of the western division of Middlesex last year has led to litigation likely to be of a protracted character, in consequence of the unsettled state of the law with respect to the right to vote at elections for coroners, and the still more serious difficulty of ascertaining in the absence of any registration what persons are entitled

to vote.

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There were two medical candidates, Dr. Hardwicke, the deputy coroner for central Middlesex, and Dr. Diplock, the successful aspirant. Although we are naturally reluctant to make any indiscreet admissions with respect to there being any limit to the capacity or powers of the legal profession, yet we fear that unless we start with Pitt's maxim that any man is fit for any place," we must admit that members of the medical profession are, ex officio, better adapted for the holding of post mortems than an expert leader at Nisi Prius. Were it the vivisection of a witness that was in question, our sympathies would be on the side of the legal world. But certainly post mortems appear to be the peculiar province of the medical practitioner. It is doubtless a general impression to this effect that virtually leaves the contest for a coronership to medical competition exclusively.

The legal world, however, as we said, are likely to be deeply interested in the mysteries of Crowners' Quest Law and Quo Warrantos by the contest referred to. Indeed, the only cause for surprise as to this phase of the question is

that there is not a Quo Warranto, or some other high prerogative writ brought to test the shortcomings of most elections for coroners. For, had the sheriff the eyes of Argus (we mean of course in a legal sense), he could hardly be able to discern between a real and a pretending voter—the question what estate is a freehold and what a chattel being sometimes of the most difficult nature, and quite adequate to puzzle a vice-chancellor, much more a sheriff or his deputy.

The pleadings in the case referred to, we believe, indicate that Dr. Hardwicke alleges that watermen and graveholders voted as such. There being no scrutiny prior to the poll, it is clear that though the allegation referred to may prove to be unfounded in fact, yet the existing state of the law holds out a bounty upon such claims. Acts indeed which judges ignore soon become obsolete, unless renewed by the Legislature, and it generally happens that the judges tire the Legislature out in the contest. There are even dicta to the effect that where a long course of usage is adverse to an Act of Parliament, the judges, although they cannot raise a prescription against the express words of a statute, yet will attack it in flank, and presume that there was a repealing Act, even though there is no record of such on the statute book.

But it is to be observed that all who vote at coroners' elections prescribe in a que estate. The prescription, therefore, being real, and not personal, no length of time can give them a prescriptive right to vote unless they prove their ownership of a freehold in the district. Did the voters claim a right by descent, independently of any estate of freehold, the legal merits of a claim not founded in fact upon the ownership of a freehold would admit of much argument. But no such claim is advanced by any class of voters at coroners' elections. In connection with the case referred to, it may not be uninteresting to trace the origin and nature of the coroner's franchise.

The office of coroner appears to be a relic of the old Saxon

government of this country. Indeed it and the County Courts are perhaps the only two Saxon institutions of which we can boast as having been transmitted to us from the freeborn Britons and Saxons of ancient times. Our common law, our Legislature, the royal prerogative, and even the "Palladium" appear to be of Norman birth.

This is perhaps the cause of the obscurity which hovers round the origin and ancient functions of the office of coroner. The County Courts were perennial institutions, ebbing and flowing at stated times, and therefore regulated by a normal jurisprudence and procedure. The coroner's visits, on the contrary, like those of the angels, are few and far between. Hence that ancient office has been allowed to become overgrown with the weeds of time, and to have received but a slight application of the reforming besom which has been so vigorously applied in numerous other directions.

For instance, there are coroners by charter, commission, or privilege, within particular liberties and franchises, as to which the lords or heads of corporations are empowered by charter to act themselves, or to create their own coroners. (Mad. Excheq., 287.) This privilege, which may also be claimed by the Crown, is expressly excepted in the statutes passed to regulate the election of coroner.

Besides this class of prescriptive coroners, and coroners ex officio, such as the Justices of the Court of Queen's Bench, there are particular coroners for each county, who hold their office virtute electionis, in pursuance of the statute 3 Ed. I. (West 1), c. 10. No number is limited by the statute, and the Lord Chancellor may issue writs for the election of one or more coroners, upon a petition of the freeholders of the county and the approbation of the justices, certified at the general quarter sessions of the peace. (The Coroner of Salop, 3 Swanst., 181. See 7 & 8 Vict., c. 92, ss. 4-29.)

The qualification fixed for a coroner by statute 3 Ed. I., c. 10 (which was probably only in affirmance of the common law), was the possession of a knight's fee. This was altered