The Corrupt Practices Bill had all but passed through Committee
before yesterday's sitting. A few alight changes had been made in the right direction,—such as the Equity clause which will permit an Election Judge to declare that by a trivial case of " treating " or " illegal practice," to which neither the candidate nor his election agent has been in any way privy, the election need not be voided; but the attempt to extend the same Equity clause to bribery on an equally small scale, and equally unknown to the candidate or his election agent, was defeated. We do not see why. Surely, the procuring by bribery of one or two votes which do not turn the scale, and procuring these against the express will and without the least knowledge of the candidate or his election agent, ought not to void an election formally made by the vast majority of the electorate. There seems to us nothing but danger to the cause of purity, in pushing the purism of the new measure beyond practical limits. Why should one or two foolish and unprincipled men, of whom neither the candidate nor his agent knows anything, be empowered to vitiate an election by their perfectly irre- sponsible lawlessness and folly P
