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affect the election; and we have paid great attention to the case.
Now let me enter into a very brief analysis to show that the facts
do not bear the construction which the relator puts upon them. Of
the cases cited, certainly two people did not get voting papers; but
if you had a hundred elections carried out throughout the kingdom in
the same way as this has been, 99 would be carried out on the basis of
the rate book. With regard to the case of Parsons, it would have been
a very bad case to my mind, if the collector had really crumpled up
the voting paper. If there was any serious ground for believing
thta such a thing happened, one would pause considerably; and one
would go a very long way in giving effect to such a piece of misconduct
as that, because one would not know how far the system had
gone. But the evidence on the point is very unsatisfactory to my
mind ; and, if the thing occurred at all, somebody else was mistaken
for the collector, and, therefore, the returning officer was not
responsible. There are no less than ten cases upon which it is
obvious that the affidavits of the respondents have very much the
best of the case; they giving explanations which are verified by the
counterfoils on the collectors' books. Reasonable explanations are
given in each case. Taking the allegations and comparing them
with the replies and the counterfoils, taking them at the highest
and the utmost of their alleged worth, they seem to come to nothing
more than the inevitable human errors which would occur on the
one side or the other. It seems to me that they really come to
nothing more than illustrations of those classes of mistakes without
which nothing like a poll of a large parish like this could ever be
taken. The reasonable address of Mr. Jelf would not say that I am
taking an unreasonable view of the facts. It seems to me I have
avoided very carefully a partiality, and tried to assume the allegations
of the relators to be worth what they purported to be; and
yet it seems to me that everything points to exactly what you
would expect to find in such a poll, and the impression upon my
mind is in favour of the thorough honesty of the whole proceeding.
And the success which has attended the whole operation is shown
by some of the larger figures connected with it. I don't profess
much experience in this kind of election; but still I have lived in
the world a long time, and I know the probabilities of the case.
With regard to a poll such as this, it is difficult to come upon
any body of men at any given time of the day. This is a middle and
working-class population, who are mostly away at their businesses
from morning until night. Nearly 8,000 voting papers were