But it was equally notorious that it had exercised that right
in a manner which violated every principle of justice and even of
decency. Election petitions were decided by the entire House, and were
almost invariably treated as party questions, in which impartiality was
not even professed. Thirty years before, the Prime-minister himself (Sir
Robert Walpole) had given notice to his supporters that "no quarter was
to be given in election petitions;" and it was a division on one
petition which eventually drove him from office. There was not even a
pretence made of deciding according to evidence, for few of the members
took the trouble to hear it. A few years after the time of which we are
speaking, Lord George Germaine thus described the mode of proceeding
which had previously prevailed: "The managers of petitions did not ask
those on whose support they calculated to attend at the examination of
witnesses, but only to let them know where they might be found when the
question was going to be put, that they might be able to send them word
in time for the division." The practice had become a public scandal, by
which the constituencies and the House itself suffered equally--the
constituencies, inasmuch as they were liable to be represented by one
who was in fact only the representative of a minority; the House itself,
since its title to public confidence could have no solid or just
foundation but such as was derived from its members being in every
instance the choice of the majority.
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