to have been nearly the general rule, to receive petitions from those only who claimed the right of voting at the elections to which the petitions related. The object of the act of the 10th was to limit the authority of the house upon election cases; and the course prescribed by that act was pursued, until the 28th of his majesty was passed, with a view to restore to the house some part of the discretionary power of which it had deprived itself by the former act. It appeared, therefore, to him, that the admission of the petition, onthe formality of which so much had been insisted, would not be inconsistent with the practice, to which, after an experience of eighteen years, the house, by the act of the 28th, had thought proper to recur. These observations he made in illustration of the equity of the case. In opposition to the arguments advanced with respect to the mandatory injunctions of the clause, he asserted, that the practice of the house, since that clause was enacted, had been decidedly against a literal construction. Where any doubt existed, with regard to the construction of the letter of the law, or the practice upon that law, he conceived it should be removed in favour of the petitioners; especially when, according to the general opinion, the petition was not liable to any substantial objections. Mr. Jekyll succeeded, and expressed his surprise at the inferences which Mr. T. Grenville had drawn from facts which admitted of quite different conclusions. He asserted that no doubt could be entertained on the construction of the act; for nothing could be more clear and mandatory in terms than the words of the clause in question. Mr. Tierney observed, that it was of importance to notice the course which this proceeding had taken. No objection, he said, had been started against the petition when it was presented. If the informality of the petition had been then pointed out, it might have been rejected without exposing the petitioners to any kind of hardship. The formality of the proceedings of the house might have been preserved, and substantial justice done to the petitioners by giving them an opportunity to prepare another petition, in which the deficiencies of the present might have been supplied. The consequence of this silence was, that if the house adopted the motion, the petitioners would be entirely deprived of every investigation of their complaint. Mr. Tierney admitted, that, if the act of parliament had specified a precise form of words to be used in such a petition, and this form had not been inserted, the argument against its admission would have been conclusive. But the act of parliament contained no such provision; and the honourable gentleman (Mr. Fox) had only insisted that the petitioners must express themselves in such a manner as to shew that they had, or claimed to have, a right to vote at the election, of the return of which they complained. Now the petitioners called themselves "freeholders of the county;" the obvious inference therefore was, that, in this capacity, they claimed the right of voting at that election. The only doubt that remained was, whether or not they were persons who had since become freeholders? But that was a subject foreign to the consideration of the house, and belonged entirely to the investigation of the committee. If the petition was informal, he contended, that it was was the fault of the house that the parties could not be heard upon it. The petitioners, by stating themselves freeholders of Middlesex, had given to their petition the common form to which the house had been accustomed. If any difficulty arose in admitting the petition under the authority of the act of parliament, it was the duty of the house to have informed the petitioners of their error, while it was in their power to correct the informality. Mr. serjeant Best observed that the house was now sitting in its judicial and not in its legislative character, and therefore, although a supreme court of judicature, it was as much bound by the law of the land as the meanest court in the kingdom. He objected to the principle of equitable construction; especially in a case in which the house had to determine upon a question relating to the extent of its own power. Precedents, he asserted, could be of no force against the intentions of the legislature, if the act of parliament admitted of a clear construction; for this would be to oppose the judicial authority of that house against an act of parliament, and would be tantamount to an admission that one branch of the legislature had the power to annul the solemn act of the whole. If the house had no jurisdiction to entertain the petition, it would be in vain to submit it to a committee. A committee was but an emanation of the house, and therefore could not have a delegated authority superior to that which the house possessed; consequently the decision of such a committee could not be binding. With respect to the hardship which the parties might experience from the rejec tion of their petition, it appeared to him, that they might have redress, either by passing of an act of parliament for their relief, or, as there was no act of parliament to limit the time of presenting an election petition, by suspending, in their favour, the existing regula tion of the house to that effect. The attorney general conceived, that where a considerable degree of doubt arose upon the form of an election petition, it would be proper for the house to send it to a committee, rather than decide for themselves. Petitions similar to the present, he maintained, had been frequently received, and, indeed, the practice of the house, from the year 1788 to the present time, afforded what might be termed an interpretation of the law upon the subject. By receiving such petitions, they may be said to have pronounced judgment upon this statute. In such cases, all that could be stated to the house was mere matter of form; they could not inquire into the merits of the petition; they could only inquire whether the petitioners had regularly stated and claimed their right to vote. In his opinion, the petition contained an allegation to that effect, and the spirit of the act had therefore been complied with. In addition to the hardship which the petitioners would experience from refusing an investigation of their claims, the rejection must extend to all petitions of a similar nature, of which there were perhaps twenty remaining. These petitions could not be received, if that from the freeholders of Middlesex were rejected. The case of the Carmarthen election he conceived to be strictly applicable to the present, for an objection similar to the present was then taken. It was, however, over-ruled by the committee, and the decision of that committee had never been the subject of question. Several members having proceeded to make in favour of and against the motion a variety of observations, the sense of which has been already given in the preceding analysis, Mr. Fox rose, and, availing himself of the privilege of a reply, expressed his regret at the indifference with which the question had been treated. The question before the house was, whether a positive act of parliament should be obeyed? He drew a conclusion from the enactment of the 28th of his majesty, very different from that which had been inferred by a right honourable gentleman (Mr. T. Grenville); and contended that it was by no means passed with a view to restore to the house the exercise of a partial discretionary power. The intention of the legislature, as far as it could be collected from the act itself, was directly the reverse; for it had very distinctly divided the jurisdictions of the house and of the committee. The house was to decide upon what might be termed the pleadings of the case; the committee were to determine the truth of the allegations. With respect to the argument against the lateness of the objection, it was entitled to no weight, when employed to resist a compliance with the provisions of an act of parliament. The introduction of a bill, or the suspension of one of the standing orders of the house, he considered to be far less objectionable than the misconstruction of a clear and positive act of the legislature. It had been urged, that the act did not point out any specific form of words; this he did not pretend to deny ; but the substance of what should be stated in an election petition was therein distinctly explained. Mr. Fox would by no means admit that the word freeholder necessa rily implied a right of voting; for many freeholders were prevented from voting, by legal disqualifications arising from the smallness of their freeholds, from places in the excise or customs, and from a variety of other causes. He acknowledged that it might be just to decide according to the equity of the case, if the question related to the construction of an old and obscure statute, and not to an act the meaning of which was clear and distinct. The hardship of the case. he said, was an evil inseparable from all human legislation, which could only proceed upon a general system, and could not be calcu lated to meet every individual case. Ignorantia legis non excusat was a general maxim in law, the harshness of which could not be disputed. It was a maxim, however, in the law of every civilised country; and, indeed, without it, no law could subsist. Every argument upon the hardship of the case was, therefore, destitute of weight. But if any rational mode could be suggested for giving relief to the petitioners, it would not meet with his opposition. The question was then put, and lost by a majority of 72. Previously to the adjournment of parliament, his majesty's ministers had intimated an intention of revising the whole volunteer system, during the recess. In consequence of this revision, Mr. seċre, tary Yorke, on the 8th of February, moved" that leave be given to bring in a bill to explain, amend, and consolidate, the provisions con tained in the several acts relative to the yeomanry and volunteer corps throughout the united king dom." dom." This motion he prefaced with a speech of considerable length, in which he took rather an extensive view of the original nature and purpose of the volunteer institution; its history, and the actual circumstances of the system, in point of law and in fact; secondly, the defects and inconveniences imputed to the volunteer establishment; and, lastly, the remedies for those inconveniences and defects. As to the first point, he conceived it almost unnecessary to state, that the present situation of this country, in its general relation to the continent, and to France in particular, required that we should have a much larger military force than was ever deemed requisite in any period of our history. The great and powerful navy of the united kingdom was not alone adequate to the defence of our coast, which included an extent of about 2500 miles; nor was the defence of Great Britain and Ireland to be confided solely to a regular army. Although a regular army was certainly the most efficient instrument of defence, yet there were various constitutional and political principles, which rendered it necessary not to place our whole reliance on the regular force of the country. The militia of the united kingdom, amounting to about 90,000 men, required, in his opinion, rather a diminution than an augmentation of its numbers. Under such circumstances, it became necessary to have recourse to the services of the great mass of the people capable of bearing arms. This had been accomplished upon the principle of enrolling and training a very large body of men, with the least possible delay and expense. The volunteer system, he stated, was by no new institution in this means a country. It was introduced, but to no material extent, during the administration of lord Shefburne in the year 1782. It was renewed in 1794, when the campaign was unsuccessful to the allies, and Holland was about to be lost. Since that time, the volunteer system, upon an enlarged scale, had formed a part of our defence. In the last war, about 150,000 men were enrolled as volunteers; and in the present, the number exceeded 400,000. With regard to the situation of the volunteers in point of law, it appears, by a late decision in the court of king's bench, that the volunteers, when not called forth upon actual service, have a right to withdraw from their respective corps. The great difference, then, between the present volunteer system and that of the last war, amounts to this; that when an attack is actually made, or an invasion attempted, all the volunteers are liable to be called out according to their respective terms of service. The exemption from the ballot for the militia, acquired by a regular attendance for a specific number of days, was less onerous to others than it had been represented. For no member of a volunteer corps was exempted from the ballot; and he was only exempted from actual service in the militia, so long as he continued to be a volunteer. With regard to the army of reserve, they were certainly placed on a different footing; for the attendance required by the act totally exempted them from the ballot for that force. The defects and inconveniences attached to the system, Mr. secretary Yorke considered as arising in a great measure from the inactive state of the volunteers; these defects, he conceived, would scarcely exist, if they were called out to actual service. Besides, as the system was, in its nature, entirely voluntary, it could not, without manifest absurdity, be viewed as established on the same footing as the regulars or the militia. The establishment of committees, he acknowledged, ought to be suppressed, wherever they presumed to interfere with military command and discipline; but the objection to them was less forcible, where they were instituted merely to regulate the peculiar affairs of corps that defrayed their own expenses. But the pay to be granted on actual service would effectually remedy any inconvenience of this description. As to the election of officers, he begged the house to consider, that there was a material difference to be observed with respect to the election of officers on the first association of such corps, and the supplying of the vacancies which might afterwards arise. The act itself allowed no officers to be elected; they were required to be commissioned by his majesty, being first recommended by the lord-lieutenants of counties. There was nothing in law or practice, on which any corps could found a claim to elect their own officers, or which could give to such a claim any sort of validity. Such claims he held to be dangerous and inadmissible and if any corps should insist on such a right, he should conceive it his duty to advise his majesty to decline their offer of service. A deviation from this rule might perhaps be admitted in favour of a few corps, which, either by express permission, or long established usage, had exercised this privilege during the last war. For the inconvenience arising from non-attendance, it would be difficult to provide any other remedy, than that of exposing the indi vidual, who does not attend the number of days required by the act, to the ballot for the militia or the army of reserve. Most of these evils, many of which were perhaps inherent in the system, Mr. secretary Yorke conceived might be remedied by the power vested in his majesty, both by his prerogative and by statute law. For his majesty possessed the power of dismissing any member or officer of a volunteer associ ation, or of disbanding the whole corps. He could also make any rules or regulations which might appear to him to be proper. He was, therefore, convinced that, in order to provide a remedy for most of the inconveniences to which he had alluded, it would be unnecessary to have recourse to the interposition of parliament, since the powers which his majesty could exercise were, probably, amply sufficient for this purpose. The interposition of parliament was necessary upon the present occasion, only to consolidate the different acts which had been passed on the volunteer institution, with a view to render their provisions more clear and intelligible, and consequently of more easy execution; and for the purpose of regulating the impor tant point of the exemptions. The exemption from the militia, he observed, was acquired by an atten→ dance of only five days in the year, and the returns were annual. That from the army of reserve required a regular attendance of twenty-four days, and the returns were made three times in a year. He thought, however, it would be preferable to place the exemptions on exactly the same footing, and to adopt the attendance requisite to avoid the ballot for the army of reserve. It was |