At first the duration of the bill was limited to seven years; but in
1774 it was made perpetual by a still larger majority, the experience of
its working having converted many who had at first opposed it, but who
now bore willing testimony to its efficacy. Unhappily, though the House
could make the bill perpetual, at least till formally repealed, it could
not invest its good effects with equal durability. After a time, the
same complaints were advanced against the decision of election
committees that had formerly been employed to discredit the judgments of
the whole House. The success or failure of a petition again became a
party question; and as in a committee of an odd number the
ministerialists or the Opposition must inevitably have a majority of at
least one member, before the end of the reign it had become as easy to
foretell the result of a petition from the composition of the committee
as it had been in the time of Walpole. And it was with the approval of
almost all parties--an approval extorted only by the absolute necessity
of the case--that, after one or two modifications of Mr. Grenville's act
had been tried, Mr. Disraeli induced the House to surrender altogether
its privilege of judging of elections, and to submit the investigations
of petitions on such subjects to the only tribunal sufficiently above
suspicion to command and retain the confidence of the nation, the judges
of the high courts of law.
Pages:
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65