The 1865 general election was regarded by contemporaries as being a generally dull contest nationally, which exaggerated the degree of corruption within individual constituencies. In his PhD thesis,
Cornelius O'Leary described
The Times as having reported "the testimony is unanimous that in the General Election of 1865 there was more profuse and corrupt expenditure than was ever known before". As a result of allegations of corruption, 50
election petitions were lodged, of which 35 were pressed to a trial; 13 ended with the elected MP being unseated. In four cases a
Royal Commission had to be appointed because of widespread corrupt practices in the constituency. As a result, when he became Prime Minister in 1867,
Benjamin Disraeli announced that he would introduce a new method for
election petition trials, which were then determined by a committee of the House of Commons, resulting in the
Parliamentary Elections Act 1868, whereby two Judges of the
Court of Common Pleas,
Exchequer of Pleas or Queen's Bench would be designated to try election petitions with full judicial salaries. == Constituencies ==