the kingdom should be the same. The convenience of persons having votes as well in counties as in a borough, or corporate constituency, may be provided for in a manner hereafter suggested.
XV. The same day shall, at every general election, be appointed for the poll, throughout the kingdom, and shall be specified in the writ; but such day shall not be less than ___ days, nor more than ___ days after the date of the said writ (which writ shall be framed and expressed in such manner and form as is necessary for carrying this Act into effect), and the respective sheriffs and returning officers shall, on receipt of the writ and the precept, respectively, forthwith make proclamation, and give notice of the day of such poll, and of the respective polling-places at which the same will be taken, within the limits of their respective counties, boroughs, or districts, and for their respective constituencies.
The votes should be taken at polling places opened in every parish, and if the parish be very large and populous, at several places in the same parish. If it be populous, but not of any wide extent, a larger staff of clerks at one place might be sufficient.
It is plain that a system of registration, having any pretensions to be adapted to its true purposes, facilitating the business of the election, distinguishing between those whose qualifications have ceased and those which continue,—between the living and the dead,—must be a registration effected by different means, having for its basis the residence of the voter, and not the place of qualification only.[1] It is in no way necessary that expense should be incurred in the erection of polling-booths. There are few parishes on the kingdom which do not contain some building applicable to a public use, as, for example, a school-room, which, without inconvenience, could be used for one day. If, in a few remote places, such a loom or building could not be found, there would be no difficulty in hiring some room in a public or
- ↑ See "Defects on the Existing Law of Registration," &c., by W. Albert James, 1859, pp. 42, 43, 44.
