elections which should be uniform in all the provinces. They made six or seven attempts to get rid of the Provincial franchises, and at last in 1885 they carried a bill to that end. It was strenuously opposed by the Liberals, who spent six weeks in resisting the change, and upholding the franchise which had served during the first nineteen years of Confederation.

The Act of 1885 established a franchise uniform in all the seven provinces, and with it went a measure providing for the preparation, revision, and printing of the electoral lists each year at the expense of the Dominion Government. The Act conferred the right to vote in respect of eight qualifications. They were (1) owners and occupiers; (2) persons in receipt of incomes or yearly earnings of at least $300 from some profession, office, trade, or investment in Canada; (3) life annuitants of $100 a year; (4) farmers' sons living at home; (5) sons of owners of real property; (6) tenants of real property paying more than two dollars a month rental; (7) fishermen owning real property and boats, nets, fishing gear and tackle, or shares in a registered ship, to the actual value of at least $150; and (8) Indians in possession and occupation of distinct tracts of land in an Indian reserve the improvements on which were valued at $150.

When the Act of 1885 was passed, it was intended that the electoral lists should be revised every year. The lists were to be prepared by clerks to the revising barristers, assisted by constables appointed for the work, and then gone over in open court by the revising barrister, as is the practice in England since 1832. The first revision under the Act of 1885 took place in 1886, when entirely new lists had to be prepared all over the Dominion. The revision cost the Government $416,000, and was so costly that there was not another revision until 1889. This time it cost $238,400, and it had to serve until 1891, when at an expense of $226,700 the third revision was made. From 1891 until 1895 there was no revision. Early in 1895 the lists were again revised; this time at a cost of $243,500. When the general election of 1896 took place the lists were eighteen months old, and since then there has been no other revision. The by-elections between 1896 and 1898 all took place on lists which, as the months went by, were increasingly out of date.

It was a Conservative Government which established the uniform Dominion franchise in 1885, and Conservative Governments were in power from that time until 1896. Yet enamoured as the Conservatives were of a uniform franchise, they did not dare ask Parliament to vote each year the money necessary for the revision of the lists. Instead of doing so, it became the practice of the Government to carry through Parliament a short Act suspending the operation of the Act of 1885, and to revise the lists only when a general election was approaching. The Liberals opposed the change in 1885, and from then until 1896 they never ceased their opposition to the Franchise Act, and the registration system which it established. Throughout this period, they complained that the registration system worked most disadvantageously for the political party in Opposition at Ottawa. While they made but few specific charges against the revising barristers, many of whom were county court judges, they complained that the preliminary work in the compilation of the electoral lists was in the hands of men who were partisans of the Government at Ottawa. These officers, it was insisted, put on the lists the names of Conservatives who were not duly qualified, and kept off the names of Liberals who were; and that to prevent many elections being determined not at the polls, but when the lists were compiled, Liberal members and Liberal candidates were compelled to spend large sums of money in watching their interests at the revision courts. Conservative members and Conservative candidates, it was insisted, were not put to these large expenses; because so long as the Conservatives were in power at Ottawa, the interests of Conservative members and candidates were safe in the hands of the officials who compiled the lists for submission to the revising barristers.

The Liberals further complained, and with good reason, that the revisions took place at such long intervals that the lists were much out of date, and that elections, by-elections especially, often took place on lists which did not afford an actual representation of the constituency. The names of men who had died, or had removed, were continued on the lists; while newcomers and young men who had come of age had to wait years before they were entitled to exercise the franchise.

While the Conservative leaders to the last contended for a uniform franchise, and a franchise under the control of the Dominion Parliament, they could not ignore the question of cost. Nor could they ignore the generally unsatisfactory condition of the lists, owing to the failure of the Government to provide for their revision every year. In 1894, these disadvantages of the system established in 1885 were admitted by Sir John Thompson, when he introduced a bill providing that the Provincial lists should be taken as the ground-work of the Dominion lists, but should be revised by barristers appointed as under the Franchise Law of 1885. Sir John Thompson in 1894 stated that after an experience of eight or nine years the Government, of which he was Premier, had come to the conclusion that it was not worth the effort to keep the divergences that existed between the two sets of franchises. Sir John Thompson's bill, however, did not get beyond first reading; and it was left to the Liberals to continue their demand for a complete reform, and to bring about a return to the old system of provincial franchises for Dominion elections as soon as practicable after they were once more in a majority in the House of Commons.

The new Franchise Act provided that the qualifications necessary to entitle any person to vote at a Dominion election shall be "those established by the laws of that Province as necessary to entitle such person to vote in the same part of the Province at provincial elections"; that the polling divisions shall be those established under the laws of the Province for the purposes of provincial elections; and that the voters' lists "shall be those prepared for the several polling divisions so established, and which on the sixtieth day next preceding the day fixed for the nomination of candidates for such Dominion election were in force, or were last in force under the laws of that Province for the purposes of provincial elections."

One of the strongest arguments for the change made in 1885 was that a Dominion franchise would prevent the Provincial Legislatures having it within their power to disfranchise particular classes of voters. Prior to 1885, Nova Scotia had passed an Act depriving all Dominion civil servants and employes of

the Government within that Province of their right to vote at elections for members of the House of Commons at Ottawa. Prince Edward's Island also had a somewhat similar enactment. In the new Act there is a clause preventing these discriminations. It declares that no person possessed of the qualifications generally required by the Provincial law to entitle him to vote at a provincial election shall be disqualified from voting at a Dominion election merely by reason of any provision of the provincial law disqualifying him from having his name on the list or from voting (1) because he is the holder of any office, (2) because he is employed in any capacity in the public service of Canada, (3) or belongs to or is engaged in any profession, calling, employment, or occupation, or (4) belongs to any other class of persons who, although possessed of the qualifications generally required by the Provincial law, are by such law declared to be disqualified by reason of their belonging to such class.

The provincial lists, when complete for the purposes of provincial elections, are to be sent to the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery at Ottawa, and by him reprinted for use at Dominion elections. In the event of any person being omitted from the lists by reason of any provincial disqualification included in the clause which has just been quoted, he may on election day be permitted to poll on taking oath that except for this particular disqualification he is entitled to vote.

Were it not for the exception of Quebec and Nova Scotia, the franchises of the several provinces might be described as uniform. British Columbia, under the new arrangement, will elect its six members of the Dominion House of Commons by universal suffrage; so will Manitoba, which has seven members; so will Ontario, which has ninety-two; and the same suffrage prevails in New Brunswick, which has fourteen; and in Prince Edward's Island, which has five. The New Act does not apply to the Northwest Territories, which have four members in the Dominion Parliament. It applies to seven of the eight provinces, and out of the 209 members elected from these seven provinces, under the Distribution of Seats Act which followed the census of 1891, 174 members will be chosen by universal suffrage.

Quebec and Nova Scotia, which have not universal suffrage, are represented in the House of Commons by sixty-five and twenty members respectively. In the Province of Quebec, the franchise is nearly as complicated as was the Dominion franchise, which has been swept away by the Act of 1898. It includes owners or occupiers of real estate, valued at $300 in cities, or $200 in other municipalities, or which yields $20 a year; tenants in cities paying a rental of $30 a year, in other municipal divisions paying a rental of $20; teachers in schools under the control of school commissioners or trustees; renters or retired farmers possessed of $100 a year; farmers' sons working on their parents' farms; sons of owners of real property living with parents, and fishermen, owning boats and fishing gear, or shares in ships. In Nova Scotia, real property of the value of $150 confers the franchise, or personal and real property together valued at $300; so does an income of $200 a year. Occupation of property of the value of $150 also confers the franchise; and in Nova Scotia the provision for farmers' sons, sons of owners of real estate, and fishermen are much the same as under the Franchise laws of Quebec.

In most of the Provinces the electoral lists are prepared by officers in the service of the municipalities and subsequently gone over by the local judges. The exceptions as regards revision by judges are Manitoba, Prince Edward's Island and Nova Scotia. In Prince Edward's Island there never have been any electoral lists. The plan in use is much similar to that in vogue in the counties of England before the Parliamentary Reform Act of 1832. On election day, the voter appears at the polls, and takes oath that by residence and payment of taxes he is entitled to vote.

While under the new plan there will be some lack of uniformity in qualification, owing to the property qualifications in Quebec and Nova Scotia, there will be uniformity all over the Dominion as to disqualifications. The new Act disqualifies and renders incompetent to vote (1) any person who at the time of a Dominion election is a prisoner in a jail or prison undergoing punishment for a criminal offence; (2) or is a patient in a lunatic asylum, (3) or is maintained in whole or in part as an