The Sun.
London, England, 1869-01-21 00:00:00

ELECTION PETITIONS.

THE HULL ELECTION PETITION.,

Against the rule obtained by Mr. Mellish, Sir John Kars-
lake, Q.C., yesterdayproceeded to skew cause. The order
of Mr. Justice Willes which was complained of was made
by arrangement, he said, on a summons returnable on the
16th of last December, the case being argued before the
learned judge by counsel. The sections of the Act referring
to recognisances were read at length by Sir John Karslake,
who observed that his contention would be that the
objection taken to the recognisances before Mr. Justice
Willes was invalid. The objection made to the recogni-
sances was, that four of the persons given'as sureties were
themselves parties to the petition, and the learned
judge had held them to be insufficient, and ordered £l,OOO
to be deposited, which had since been done. The decision
of the judge upon that point was one that he (Sir John)
would not take upon himself to say was wrong, but he
should argue that the sitting members had no right, finding
that four of the sureties were petitioners, to take out such
a summons as they had done, a summons which treated
the matter as if no recognizance had been entered into.
When a recognisance good on the face of it
had been de facto entered into, it was a question
for the proper tribunal to decide whether it was
sufficient or not. The recognisance and deposit were to be
lodged with the officer who was to decide if the petition
was at issue. What the other side had attempted to do
was to look outside the recognisance and say it was not
sufficient.

Mr. Justice Smith : What you have to meet is the
assertion on the other side, that the fact of the money
required to be deposited on petitions not being in this case
paid in within the specified time, rendered the petition
itself null and void.
Mr. Justice Byles: What is the exact point which you
are labouring at this moment to establish, Sir John?
Sir John Karslake : What I want to establish is that
the objectors to the recognisances had no right to treat a

recognisance which had been lodged with the Master as a
void recognisance, but that they ought to have gone to the
judge to ask him to decide whether it was null or not. The
learned counsel then went on to point out that by the
Act it was provided that if the master or judge found the
security insufficient, a further time was given in which to
bring in the amount of money ordered to be deposited.

After the lapse of a certain time it was the Master's duty
to treat the petition as at issue, and put it on the list; but
it was contended on the other side that at any time the
Master could decide that there was a defect in the recogni-
sance. The Act could never have intended that which
would be a highly inconvenient course ; but the Act had
provided a means by which the insufficiency of a recog-
nisance could be decided by the judge ; and in the present
case what was deemed a defect was remedied by the order
of the judge, made by consent.
Mr. Henry James, who, with Mr. Mellish, Q.C.,
appeared on the other side, denied that it was by arrange-
ment. He had himself protested against the course
taken.

The Chief Justice : Was any application made to the
Master? The Act says the application is in the first
instance to be made to him, an appeal to be brought to the
iudge within five days.
Sir John Karslake: There was no application in the
matter to the Master.
It was here stated by one of the learned counsel who
appeared in the I3odmin petition, that it was agreed in
chambers, that to avoid circuity in a number of cases,
petitions should be taken a 3 having been before the
Master.

Mr. Mellish, in answer to Mr. Justice Smith, said,
what he contended Wa3 that neither the Master nor the
election judge had power to make the alteration in ques-
tion. His clients had applied to Mr. Justice 'Willes, not
as the judge on the rota for elections, but as judge of the
Common Pleas.

Sir John Karslake said it was essential that he shoula
know whether the order was by agreement or not. By the
form of the order itself he contended the jurisdiction of
the judge had been admitted, and on the face of it the
recognisance was good, and its being otherwise could only
be determined by the master and the judge. Upon
the further question whether, as there were two
respondents, security for £2,000 instead of £l,OOO
ought to have been given, Sir John Karslake re-
ferred to the old practice of the House of Commons,
where the latter sum was always deemed sufficient, and
argued that it could never have been intended that where
there were two respondents to the same petition there
should be two sets of processes ; remarking, amidst much
laughter, that if the court held that to be so, he trusted it
would also provide that attorneys should be allowed to
Charge for two briefs given to counsel.
Mr. Mellish, in support of the rule, pointed out that
the old practice of the House of Commons went on
the ground that the decision of the examining officer of
recognisances as to their validity or otherwise was conelu-

give, and that if a recognisance was found to be invalid
the petition at once went to the ground. There was, in
. .

fact, no provision for any amendment.

The Lord Chief Justice : You say that in the present
case there has been no security and no deposit.
Mr. Mellish replied that that was so, and then referred
to the conditions now laid upon petitioners, especially

dwelling on the fact that the security for costs must be

given within three days from the time of presenting the
petition. Examining the meaning of the term " security,"

he contended that it must mean something different to
the liability of a petitioner himself. Under the old

system the duty of the examining officer would have
been to institute an inquiry if such a recognisance had been
presented to him in connection with such a petition, for

he had to certify to the House that he had received recog

nisances as security for the petitioners.

The Lord Chief Justice asked if the examiner would
have inquired into any recognisance unless it was bad on

he face of it.

Mr. Mellish still contended that it would have been his
duty to do so. He had no nower to alter or make good a

recognisance.

The court adjourned till to-day.

A movement has been commenced for the esta-
blishment of a miners' accident fund for South-West
Lancashire, to afford relief in cases of distress caused by
the numerous casualties occurring in the colleries of the
district. It is proposed that the money should be raised
independent of any trade organisation.

QUIET& NON MOVERE.—A curious accident
occurred recently at Varna, which is thus described by a
correspondent on the spot:—" While some workmen were
pulling down an old house in the town to make room for a
Government office now in course of construction, they came
on one of the shells thrown by the Russians during the
bombardment of 1828, which had since remained quietly
imbedded in the thickness of a corner wall amid rubble and
mortar. No match, of course, remained, and the touch-
hole was full of dirt. One of the workmen, an Albanian,
rolled the projectile down, and, taking it between his knees,
began clearing it out with a chisel, when suddenly it
exploded, threw down all around, wounded several, and
killed the Albanian on the spot, catting off both his legs
at the hips. The unlucky man was a Christian of the
Greek zits, and thus added one more to the long list of his
co•nationals who have owed their destruction to Russian
intervention in their behalf."

Yesterday, Lord Chief Justice Bovill and Justices
13yles, Keating, and Montague Smith, sat in the Court of
Common Pleas to hear the arguments on the rules that
had been granted in connection with election petitions in
various parts of the country. There was an enormous bar,
and the court was densely crowded throughout the day.
The first case taken was that of

In the matter of the Hull petition, Mr. Mellish, Q,C.,
had obtained a rule nisi to reverse the decision of Mr.
Justice Willes, who, at chambers, had decided that the
sureties for the recognisances were sufficient to
satisfy the requirements of the Act. The grounds
upon which the learned counsel had applied for
the rule were, that if the petitioners against any
election return failed to deposit the full amount within the
proper time the petition fell to the ground. Thirteen
persons had joined in the present petition, four of whom
had given a guarantee for £250 each, but the money
was not deposited within the specified time. Mr.
Justice Wines had said that the non-deposit was a
defect, but that it was a defect which could be cured by
subsequent deposit. Mr. Mellish, however, contended
that there was, in fact, no " deposit " at all, and that the
petition was at an end. It was a similar case to a man
who had to deposit £l,OOO but only deposited £5OO. The
petition was a proceeding essentially in the Court of Com-
mon Pleas as much as any other record of its own, and
the petition had to be presented to that court. Section
6th stated that the petition should be presented within
twenty-one days, and at the time of such presentation, or
within three days after, a deposit should be made to cover
the expenses of witnesses and others, and if there was
no other clause giving the court or the judge of it power
to amend and the security was not forthcoming, there was
an end of the petition. It did not appear to him that
there was any provision made to amend if any blunder was
made in the matter of the deposit not being in time.
There was a clause which provided that when the security
was given on recognisance, it was capable for the respon-
dent to object within five days to the insufficiency of the
recognisance, or that the person named in the recognisance
was dead, or that he had not fully completed the recog-
nisance. A recognisance totally diverse from that contem-
plated by the Act was no recognisance at all. As far as
the petitioners were concerned, they were liable to all
costs in the petition in the ordinary manner, and the
security was nut given by them for their costs as a security
at all.