Mr. Tomline this week gave a horrible fright to hon.
members and others with weak nerves, by announcing a discovery that, under an old statute of 1372, no lawyer can sit as a county mem- ber ; and Mr. Bentinck went farther, and threatened the country that it might awake to find its last few centuries' legislation sud- denly repealed in tote by the invalidation of every division on which a lawyer county member had voted, Happily, the whole thing is a mare's-nest, but several hon. members received a severe "turn." There is in the Parliament Roll for 46 Edward III. an " ordinance" forbidding " won of law " to represent counties in Parliament, and this ordinance, it seems, has crept by some mismanagement into the " Revised Edition of the Statutes." Even Hallam never could satisfy himself of the precise effect of an " ordinance ;" it seems, however, to have been distinguishable from a statute as a merely temporary measure. There was an instance a few years earlier than Mr. Tomline's ordinance in which the Houses deliberately preferred to have certain sumptuary laws made in an ordinance instead of a statute, because they might want altering. At any rate, which perhaps is more to the purpose, Mr. Tomline's ordinance never took a place as part of the statute law of the laud. The only Parlia- ment summoned without lawyers was in Henry IVea reign. The question now raised has often been cauvassed both in Parliament and out of it. The affair is, therefore, a mare's-nest, and not only so, but an old mare's-nest.
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