IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) // {/ V 5? r,tish subject. ?>. He must reside in the Polling District in which he seeks to be registered. 4. He must have an income of at least $300 a year. ."). He must have earned that income during the last year. G. He must have resided in Canada for the last preceding year. Now, these are the grounds I submit on which Allin's claim must rest, and his failure to sustain ary one of them would ex- clude his name from the list. 1 take it that grounds and reasons are synonymus terms, and 1 am unable to see any ground or reason for exclnsion in the bare assertion " you are not qualified for income ". The assertion " you are not qu;ilifi(!d for income " is a conclusion to be drawn from the want of one or other of the requisites I have mentioned ; it is not a (jruund or a reason It is a deduction to be drawn from certain ])remise.=. ]f this word nrouiKls is to be retjarded as meaningless it is an unfortunate expression. It was very easy to have said that a sinijtle complaint in writing was all that was necessary. But when this form requires the grounds to be stated surely something more is requisite than a mere naked complaint like this of Lilley's. There is also another income qualification. By Sub-Sec. ] of Section 3 a person is entitled to be registered ns a voter who has a life annuity of $100 a year secured on land, and to main- tain his claim he has to fulfil the conditions 1 and 2 above mentioned. 8. He must have been a resident in the electoral district for one year previous. 4. He must be in the receipt of this annuity for the year previous. 5. It must be secured on land. 6. He must be registered in the particular polling district in which he resides. These variations of the income qualification render it more necessary that an objecting yiarty should parti- cularize the grounds upon which he intends to make the attack. The Revising Officer in the preparation of the list in June has to collect the names of those who appear qualified from the I i ? 9 9 assessment rolls and the provincial and municipal lists and from solemn declarations, and to register their names subject to subse- quent corrections. In this I think he is entitled to the benefit of the maxim "omnia presumuntur rite esse acta" until his un- worthiness is shown. Accordingly, those persons whose names he has placed upon the list have a 'prima facie right to be there as voters, and from this right 1 conceive they can only be dis- placed for go( d and suihcient reason, which they are entitled lo know with at least reasonable certainty. It is a very easy thing to scatter hundreds of notices of objections founded on mere conjecture, and by way of experi- ment with the result that tlie parties thus objected to if within ten miles of the polling place, on being served with a summons, are to obey it without any payment whatever for expenses ; or if they do not attend their names may be struck off the list, and they are likewise liable to a fine of $o. All this tends to strengthen the position that a party having a prima facie right to be on the list is entitled to 1 ave some solid ground or reason why that right is to be invaded, before he is subjected to ihese punitive conditions. To return to what transpired upon the issue of the mandamus from the Court of Queen's Bench requiring the lievising Officer to proceed. It appears he did so, considering that it was no part of his duty to incur expense and loss of time by entering into an adverse contention with the Court of Queen's Bench. He then went on and dea^t with various cases on the notices wliich I deemed to be invalid. Of these cases there were many in which i the parties, by their counsel, refused to make any defence, relying i|^ upon the invalidity of the notices they had received; and there were others who made no appearance at all. Tiie names of these persons are retained on the list, and are distinguished by the letter A attached to each. These [tersons, or some of tiiem, it appears, '' voted at the recent election, and the question is whether these persons were entitled to vote. To this puint the controversy is . reduced, Let me here refer to some other portions of the Act to 10 see if there is any authority for treating such a notice as this as sufficient by way of amendment or correction. By Sec. 20 Sub-Sec. 3 " no application to add to or to remove a name shall be dismissed on account of error in the nanu, surname or designation mentioned therein, provided such error is corrected on or before the final revision, and provided that the Revising Officer is satisfied that the application was reasonably certain, and that no person concerned is misled by such error." This shows what descriptions of innocent error shall not exclude a voters name. But it does not favor the inference that errors of a more serious character like that we are considering are to be deemed equally venial. By the same Sec. 20 the Revising Officer is authorized to amend or correct the list, but his power is subject to this condition, that " notice has been given as afore- said," by which is meant the notice D. Sec. 10 authorizes the Revising Officer to retain the name of any person entered on the original list although his qualification is incorrectly entered thereon " if it appears that such person is entitled to be registered on the " list of voters as possessed of any of the qualificitions set forth "in this Act; but the Revising Officer shall enter the name of " such person on the first supplementary list with the necessary " alterations." And by Sub-Sec. 4 Section 20, " if on the hearing of jiny objection to any name on the original or su})plementary list of a polling district it appears that the name or qualification of the person whose name is objected to is incoriectly entered on the list, but that he ])ossesses such (qualification as entitles him to be registered thereon, the Revising Ollicer shall retain such person's name thereon making the necessary corrections ; or if it appears that the person whose name is objected to is not entitled to be retained on such list, but that he po.ssesses such qualification as would entitle him, if he had given the necessary notice, to be placed on the list for any other ])olling district, the Revising Officer can make the change." Thus there are extensive powers of correction and auiend- ,^ tl ^ merit in the Act, but they are in my opinion dependent on the condition that a proper notice has been given in the first instance so as fairly to require the party objected to enter upon his defence. I do not say that this notice of objection must contain all the grounds I have above enumerated. Probably the mention of one of them would suffice to require the party objected to to appear, and having done so the lie vising Officer may proceed or not under the amending clauses of the Act in his discretion. Under the English system of registration for voting purposes the duty of first collecting the names and preparing the lists devolves on certain officials called overseers. There are points of similarity and divergence between our Act and the Imperial one. But no authority has been cited, and I believe none can be cited, to show that such a notice as this in question has ever been held sufficient. T shall refer to some of these cases : In Hartley v. Halse, 22, Q. B. Div., 200, tiie Voters' List comprised three divisions, almost [)recisely similar to our Pro- vincial Voters' Lists, compreheiKiing first parliamentry and countv voters; 2, parliamentary voters only, and 3rd, county voters only. The objection to the name was that it did not specify the particular division to which the objections referred. It was held that this was a mere mistake, and that the notice referred in an unmistakable manner to the list intended. Cole- ridge C. J., said : " Where a statute directs that a particular form shall be used, and a form is used which omits some essen- ^'tial element in the statutory form, the use of the defective form invalidates the proceeding." y Borough of Battersea V. Clethem, 4 L. T., Rep. 115.— The question was whether the description of the objector given in the notice was in compliance with the form given in the Act. The Revi.sing Barrister decided that it was, and expunged several names in consequence. This deci sion was reverse d. Lord Cole- ridge C. J., said that the notice was not according to the form. 12 He said furtlier that tliouj^lj it was true that the Act provides " tliat the disregard of any form shall not invalidate, these " words do not mean that a total disregard of all forms is pro- " tected. The notice does not give the person objected to the " information as to the person objecting which the Act intended " to be given and the absence of wiiich miglit pnt him to incon- '• venience. I tlierefore hold," he said, " that in not following the " form in this respect the objector has not only not followed the " form but has not in substance comjjlied with the enactment," in which the other judges concurred. In Bridges v. Miller, 20, Q. B. Div., 2(S7, a notice of objec- tion that you do not reside at 1 2 Clifton St., Norwich, was held bad because a valid notice of objection should have stated that he had not resided there for a year i)ast. Lord Coleridge held it was no notice at all and the other judges concurred. In Humi>hrey v. Earle, 20, Q. B. Div. 294, the form under the Act of 18cS5 requires a notice of objection to contain a descrip- tion of the objector's place of residence (as our notice D, does). The description here was wrong, or at all events it was imperfect. Pollock, B., said the point is technical, but on the other hand it is important that these notices should strictly follow the statutory form. In Smith v. Chandler, ">, L. T. Bep., 110, a case was reserved as to the suflficiencv of an attestation clause in which the date was omitted. This afi'ected 2G0 names. Loi'd Co eridge said, " It was suggested that the barrister might have amended, but he rightly held he could not amend. It was not a case of mistake, but the form had deliberately been departed from " Mr. Justice Manisty said ihe omission of the date was not a mistake. It was done knowingly and intentionally, and the bairister was right in holdins; it to be fatal to the claim. In this case the ar'^lic?.<^^ion was to add names, and the attestation was ini{)ortant 3 it must have been before a certain date. In this case tiie proviso in the Act was cited that a disregard of the form shall ^i 18 not make a notice bad. But to that Mr. Justice Hawkins replied that it was so in the case of a mistake, which the Court held this was not. In a very recent case reported in 8, L. T., Rep. 299, the magistrates refused a tavern license because they said the case had already been disposed of. The Court ordered a mandamus to issue to require the Justices to state the grounds upon which their decision was arrived at. Sir Henry Hawkins said there were four ^r()unds on which the renewal of the license might have been refused. The a.p])Iicant was entitled to know upon what ground it was refused. Mr. -lustice Wills .said, there being four grounds on wliich the renewal of the license might be refused, the magistrates ought to have specified the ground on which it was refused. Tliis last case has no immediate reference to parliamentary voting, but serves to show tliat where there are certain grounds wliy a privilege may be denied the specific grounds, (jr one or other of them must be stated. There are other English cases which beai upon the subject of this appeal, but so far as 1 can discern they all lead to one result, namely, that a person whose name is on the original voters' list is not required to defend liis position unless he has received a notice di.stinctly stating one or more sulUcient grounds for his exclusion. If it be said that the law on this subject is much stricter in England than it is here, and stress is laid upon Sec. 26, where it is said the lievising Officer shall not be bound by forms in force in Courts of llecord. I answer, that the Imperial Act con- tains the proviso already mentioned which our Act does not, namely, that the disregard of any forms not limited to forms used in Courts of Kecord shall not invalidate. Nevertheless, we see that a deviation from the forms in the English Act, much less important than in the case of this Appeal, has been held to be fatal I now come to what has transpired in our own Courts in relation to this subject. In Lilley v. Allin, 21 Ont., Eep. 424, an opinion was expressed by the learned Judges of the Court of Queen's Bench that the notice in question was sutficient, and by 14 mandamus tlie Revising OlHcer was required to proceed, which he did upon the notices, tlie invalidity of which was then, as now, the subject of appeal. Scarcely any decision could be more briefly stated, and the want of a reasoned judgment is unsatis- factory, especially as on the cardinal question as to the power of the Court to control the lie vising Officer there is a wide divergence between that decision and the considered judgment of the Divisional Court of Chancery in Hessin v. Lloyd. In the Court of Appeal to which the case was carried no judgment or costs were given, but three of the judges expressed an opinion that the notices given were sufficient. I entertain an unfeigned respect for opinions expressed by the learned judges of that Court, and I would gladly, if I could, shelter myself from inevitable odium by conforming to their expression of opinion. But it is evident from the language used by these learned judges, or at least by some of them, that they were rather reluctantly drawn into any expression of opinion on the subject, and one of them described any opinion expressed by the Court to be simply an obiter dictum. In this situation it appears to bo imperative that I should give judgment; and for the reasons I have given, 1 can arrive at no other conclusion than this. That the notice in question, and the other similar notices, were and are invalid. I repeat this, although this notice of Lilley has been specially dealt with by me, because it forhied the particular object of the api)eal by Allin. Still, it was understood all along that it was only representative of other instances where similar notices omitting the "rounds of objection had been given, not for income only, but for other quali- fications, and all these are involved in the result of Allin's appeal. The ett'ect of this invalidity is, that the recipients of such notices were not required, unless they chose, to appear before the Revising Officer to maintain their position, and their rights as voters have not been prejudiced by such non-attendance. Their names, as I learn from the Revising Officer, are noted on the list which was used at the recent election with the letter A, signify- \ ■•■f^r 15 ing that their claims were under appeal, and so they are easily distinguished. In conclunon, I hold that this appeal is sustained, and that these persons thus distinguished by the letter A were entitled to vote. Whether they did so or not is a matter in which I am not now concerned. If they did vote, 1 hold their votes must be treated as aood votes, and the declaration of the lieturning Officer as to the result of the Poll does not requi -e any change so far as I am concerned. W. ELLIOT, 9th March, 1892. County Judge Middlvsex. ■n