The occupation franchise for county voters is, full age, and being owner or tenant of land or tenements within the county of the rateable value of £12 or upwards.

By s. 2, occupiers in boroughs to be rated, and not the owners only.

By s. 11, no elector who has been employed in any election as agent or canvasser for reward in behalf of any candidate is entitled to vote at such elections, or if he vote is guilty of misdemeanour.

At a contested election for county or borough, represented by three members, no person to vote for more than two candidates. In the City of London no person to vote for more than three candidates (s. 10).

Part 2 of this important national statute refers principally to the distribution of seats and the allocation of members. After the end of the present parliament no borough with a less population than 10,000 at the last census to return more than one member. But certain populous boroughs, namely, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, and Leeds, to return each, at the next general election, three members. By s. 18, certain new boroughs are specified to return one member each, except Chelsea, which is to return two members. Merthyr Tydfil and Salford to return two members each. The Tower Hamlets to be divided, and each division to return two members. Certain specified counties are to be divided, and each division to return two members. In future parliaments the new members for the University of London to be chosen by every man whose name is on the register of graduates constituting the convocation of the University.

The residue of the Act principally refers to the incidents of an election, to successive occupation, the duties of overseers, clerks of the peace, registration and its expenses, choice of polling places, and the non-vacation of seats by members holding offices from the Crown.

By s. 56, the franchises conferred by the Act to be in addition to and not in substitution for any existing franchise, but no person to vote for the same place in respect of more than one qualification. So far as consistent the new Act to be construed with the new enactments now in force. In the event of a dissolution of parliament before January 1, 1869, elections to take place as heretofore, except as to the boroughs disfranchised. Section 61 defines a "dwelling-house" to include any part of a house occupied as a separate dwelling, and separately rated to the relief of the poor.

Another Act, the 30 & 31 V. c. 81, simplifies the form of a prorogation of parliament, pending the recess of its sittings, without the subsequent issue of a writ or patent of commission under the Great Seal.

D

VIII. ROYAL ASSENT.

The royal assent is given either in person or by commission. When a bill has received the royal assent in either of these ways, it becomes a statute, or act of parliament, and is enrolled in the Court of Chancery and printed by the queen's printer for public distribution. The royal assent is given in the lords, the commons being present at the bar, to which they are summoned by the Black Rod. It seldom happens that the assent is given in person, unless it be at the close of the session, when the queen usually attends to prorogue parliament, and, seated on the throne, robed and crowned, signifies her pleasure what bills shall become acts, through the clerk of parliament.

By legal fiction, all the acts passed in one session are held to be only so many chapters, that comprise one statute, and the entire session to only form one day; in consequence an act of parliament was held to operate from the day on which parliament assembled, at whatever period of the session it passed. But this is remedied by the 33 G. 3, c. 13, by which all acts are directed to commence from the date of the royal assent, unless some other period is expressly mentioned in the act.

An adjournment is the discontinuance of sitting from one day to another during the session.

Prorogation is an act of royal authority, and is a discontinuance of parliament from session to session. After prorogation, all bills begun, and not completed, must, if wished for, be resumed afresh in the next session; but, after adjournment, the business of the house is taken up in the state in which it was left.

A dissolution is the ending or civil death of the parliament, and may happen three ways:-1. By the will of the queen, expressed either in person, by commission, or proclamation. 2. Parliament may expire by length of duration. The utmost duration of the same parliament, under 6 W. & M. c. 2, was three years; after the expiration of which, reckoning from the return of the first summons, the parliament was to have no longer continuance. But, by 1 G. 1, st. 2, c. 38, this term has been extended to seven years.

CHAPTER VI.

Rights of the People.

THE people may be relatively considered that great portion of the community separate from its government; and having briefly stated the origin and powers of the ruling authorities, we shall next advert to those protective measures by which society is

shielded from the oppression and encroachments of the governing suthority.

The chief securities, by which the rights of the people are recognized, are Magna Charta, the Coronation Oath, the Petition of Right, the Habeas Corpus Act, the Bill of Rights, and the Act of Settlement. With the exception of the last, the Bill of Rights is the most recent declaration in favour of public liberty; and, comprising, as it does, a distinct affirmation of all those points on which the people and their rulers had been formerly divided, it may new be considered the great constitutional act by which the national rights and immunities are prescribed and guaranteed.

The Bill of Rights, or declaration delivered by the lords and commons to the Prince and Princess of Orange, February 13th, 1659, and afterwards enacted in parliament, and incorporated in the statute law of the realm, declares-

That the pretended power of suspending laws, or the execution of laws, by regal authority, without the consent of parliament, is illegal.

That levying money for the use of the crown by pretence of premgative, without grant of parliament, for longer time, or in other marrer, than the same is or shall be granted, is illegal.

That it is the right of the subject to petition the queen, and all commitments and prosecutions for such petitioning are illegal. That the raising or keeping a standing army within the kingdom in time of peace, without the consent of parliament, is against Law.

That subjects who are Protestants may have arms for their de. fence suitable to their condition, and as allowed by law.

That elections of members of parliament ought to be free. That the freedom of speech and debate, and proceedings in parliament, ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of parliament.

Tust excessive bail ought not to be required, nor excessive fines impsed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

That jurors ought to be duly empannelled and returned, and jarors who sit upon men accused of high treason ought to be freehollers.

That all grants and promises of fines and forfeitures of particular persons before conviction are illegal and void.

And, for redress of grievances and amendment of the laws, parlaments ought to be held frequently.

The claims set forth in this declaration are affirmed to be the indubitable rights and liberties of the people, and are again asserted in the Act of Settlement, which limited the crown to the family of her present Majesty. Some new provisions were also aldel, for better securing our rights and immunities, which the statate declares to be "the birthright of the people of England," according to the ancient doctrine of the common law.

The guarantee of civil liberties next in importance is the Habeas Corpus Act, the 16 C. 2, c. 10, amended by 31 C. 2, c. 2. By this act, if any person be imprisoned by the order of any court, or the queen herself, he may have a writ of habeas corpus to bring him before the court of Queen's Bench, or the Common Pleas, who shall determine whether the cause of his committal be just. As this act extends only to committals in criminal cases, the 53 Geo. 3, c. 100, has extended the remedies it gives to miscellaneous causes of confinement other than criminal offences, and the power of issuing the writ to all the judges. But by 25 & 26 V. c. 20, no writ of habeas corpus can issue out of England from any judge or court of justice into any colony or foreign dominion of the crown, where the queen has a lawful court empowered to issue such writ and ensure its execution.

In times of great political excitement and suspected treasonable conspiracies, the operation of the Habeas Corpus Act has been suspended, as in Ireland in 1866, by 29 V. c. 1. But such suspension does not enable any one to imprison without cause or valid pretext for so doing; it only prevents persons who are committed from being bailed, tried, or discharged, during the suspension, leaving to the committing magistrate all the responsibility attending on illegal imprisonment. It is not uncommon, therefore, to pass an act of indemnity subsequently, for the protection of those who either could not defend themselves in an action of false imprisonment without making improper disclosures of the information on which they acted, or who have done acts not strictly defensible at law, though apparently justified by the necessity of the mo

ment.

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In addition to the preceding may, in the present edition, be added a further immunity conceded in the last session of parliament by the guarantee obtained, as it is fitly described, of the Elementary Education" of the people. The act referred to is the 33 & 34 V. c. 75, in which there is no interference with the religious sentiment of pupils or parents, further than the free admission of her Majesty's inspectors, whose inquiries will be limited to secular progress, apart from religious impressions or proficiency.

PART II.

ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE.

WHEN a person has sustained an injury, the first consideration naturally is the mode whereby that injury can be legally redressed. It will be proper, therefore, before we enter on the wrongs to

which individuals are liable, shortly to advert to the tribunals and remedies provided by the laws of England for the administration of civil and criminal justice. This division of the subject will be included under the following heads:

1. Courts of Law.

2. Civil Process.

3. Criminal Process.

4. Process and Reforms in Equity.—Summary Convictions. 5. Constitution of Juries.

6. Evidence.

CHAPTER I.

Courts of Law.

Cocars are places where justice is judicially administered, either in civil cases, between party and party, or, in criminal offences, between the sovereign and the people. Some of them are superior, as the great courts of Westminster, and have a general jurisdiction and control over other courts. Others are inferior, their jurisdiction limited, and subordinate to superior courts. Some of them are courts of record, others not of record, and this forms the chief legal distinction.

A court of record is that where the proceedings are enrolled in parchment and preserved, and which has power to hold pleas, according to the course of the common law, in all actions to the amount of 408. or upwards; such are the court of Queen's Bench, the Common Pleas, the county courts, and the courts of borough recorders.

A court not of record is that where proceedings are not enrolled, and which has no general authority to fine or imprison; such are the courts baron. These courts can hold no plea of matters cognizable by the common law, unless under the value of 40s., nor of any forcible injury whatever, not having any process to arrest the person of the defendant.

The supreme court of judicature in the kingdom is the House of Lords. It has no original jurisdiction over causes, except in divorce bills or contested elections of its own members, but only upon appeals, to rectify any injustice or mistake in the courts below, and is, in all suits, the last resort, from whose decision no further appeal to any other tribunal is permitted.

Next to the House of Lords is the Court of Chancery, which is of very ancient institution. Its jurisdiction is either ordinary or extraordinary; in the first, its mode of proceeding is conformable to the common law; in the last, it exercises jurisdiction in cases of equity, in order to abate the rigour of the common law, and afford a remedy for grievances in which the ordinary law-courts are in