Scottish Court of Session Decisions

Lord Ormidale said he thought that successive holding of different subjects was not enough to amount to the statutory qualification of a voter. There was this difference between county and burgh voters, that in burghs it was well known that householders, especially £10 householders, were in the constant practice of holding their premises for a very short period indeed. But this was not common in agricultural districts. It was therefore probably to provide a remedy for this evil that a difference was made in the Act between burgh and county voters. Therefore in regard to the Reform Act of 1832 he could not arrive at any other conclusion than that the successive holding of the qualification of a county voter was not sufficient under the statute; and all the Registration Courts in Scotland had for thirty or forty years concurred in coming to that conclusion. Nor by the County Voters Act of 1861 was any change introduced, or intended to be introduced. The object of section 42 was to provide a remedy for an evil, not to change the essential nature of the qualification. He therefore moved that the appeal be dismissed and the Sheriff's decision sustained.

Lord Kinloch had come to the same conclusion. There was nothing in the County Voters Act entitling the Court to adopt a different inference from that done by the Sheriff. Neither did he think this decision was affected by anything in that Act when read in combination with the Reform Act of 1832. It was plain that the statute was passed in order to meet the case of persons who had lost the qualification, but who had acquired a new one before they tendered their votes. It had been argued that the term “qualification” might be interpreted to mean pecuniary amount. He could not give the word this partial meaning. If we had nothing but sections 7, 9, and 11 of the Reform Act, he would have thought the case one of great difficulty. He agreed with Mr Monro in thinking that sections 7 and 9 might be read so as to import successive occupation in counties. At the same time he was not prepared to say that this was the natural construction of the statute; his own impression was rather the reverse, But all difficulty was removed by connecting section 12 with the previous sections. And where he had that section expressly allowing successive occupancy in burgh subjects, he could not come to any other conclusion than that burgh subjects were meant to be in a different position from other subjects.

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