In order to remove every impediment, technical or otherwise, to the possible election of any man whom the quotient of the electors may choose, the case of returning officers should be provided for. These would together form a body of five or six hundred persons, or perhaps more, all of them of some eminence in their localities. The materials of which the representative assembly is composed, are "of ten thousand times greater consequence than all the formalities in the world."[1]
XIII. If any person who, by virtue of his office, may be the returning officer in any election, should be a candidate at such election, it shall be lawful for such returning officer to appoint an assessor to act in his stead, and the said appointment, when confirmed by the Lord lieutenant of the county in which such constituency shall be situated, or by the sheriff of the said county or city, or by any three magistrates for the same county, city, or borough, shall be effectual, and the certificate or return of such assessor shall be valid, as if the same were made by such returning officer.
The accumulation of exclusions which has been so inconsiderately created or allowed, is not excused or palliated by saying we have nevertheless done very well. The repeated amendments which almost every legislative Act requires, and a vast amount of costly experience, prove that many things are done very ill. In administrative subjects much of our legislation egregiously fails. New machinery is constantly erected to effect the same or some of the same objects, for which old machinery is already applicable, and then the double powers are left to conflict with and impede each other; and the expenses of the establishment go on increasing far beyond what is needful, and out of all proportion to the work which is accomplished. It is impossible to calculate the mischief occasioned by the loss of any useful legislative element which is shut out.
All such prospective and exceptional legislation, dictated, as it is vainly imagined, by a far-sighted wisdom, and in-
- ↑ Reflections, &c., p. 58.
