HC Deb 27 April 1860 vol 158 cc239-44
MR. EDWIN JAMES

said, that before he put the question, of which he had given notice, he wished, as his name had been mentioned in the somewhat interlocutory discussion which had taken place on the returns of householders, to say but one word. There had been a great deal of assertion on one side, and of counter assertion on the other; but the critical analysis, which was to be performed in "another place," would soon show who was in the right, and who was in the wrong. He desired to say that he had never himself impugned, nor had he heard any other hon. Member in the House do so, either the intention of the Government in procuring the Returns, or the accuracy of the figures in themselves. All he meant to express was, his opinion that the noble Lord, the Member for London, was inaccurate in stating that the Returns he laid on the Table would show an additional number of voters of 150,000 only. [Lord J. RUSSELL: 190,000.] He believed the noble Lord's statement was about 200,000 in round numbers. That was all the charge he made—that the noble Lord's statement was inaccurate. That point would probably soon be decided: and the sooner the better; for it was painful to find the hon. Members for Liverpool differing so widely as to the number of their future constituents—one saying it would be 21,000— the other 30,000. He rose, however, to ask the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether it is the intention of Her Majesty's Government to introduce any measure to provide for the registration for this year of many persons who become entitled to vote in the event of the Representation of the People Bill being passed into law during the present Session of Parliament? This was a question of very considerable importance. As the Bill stood, it had no machinery whatever for the registration or revision of a new constituency. He was anxious to know whether that arose from an oversight on the part of the Government, which would be corrected by bringing in a Subsidiary Bill to supply the defect, or whether it had been intentionally done, and they meant to leave the law as it stood, without proposing any new measure on the subject. Assuming the Reform Bill to pass into law during the present Session, the Government could not hope that it would do so before the 20th of July. The system of registration, as at present provided for, commenced in July; and this being so, it would not include the new constituencies to be created under this Bill. The Reform Bill of 1832 received the Royal Assent on the 7th of June; and it prescribed, for the first time, the whole system of registration and revision. The operation began on the 20th of June; lists were made out; and all the new voters were placed on the register. The Reform Bill of last Session, introduced by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Buckinghamshire, contained a series of elaborate clauses, most ably drawn, and conferring great credit on the lawyer who prepared them, regulating the system of registration, and also a provision, necessary to any Reform Bill, that in the event of the Bill passing into law, a new system of registration should be at once commenced. Unless the Government meant to introduce a subsidiary Bill, there would be a perfect chaos of confusion. The Bill of the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Disraeli) provided that the registration should commence immediately after the new Bill passed. The present Bill made no such provision; but he inferred, from one of its clauses, that the Government did not in- tend the new constituencies to be registered, or become voters, until 1862; and he would tell the House why. He hoped that this Bill, though a mere skeleton, would pass in the present Session: but if it did so it must be too late for the coming registration, county claims being made on the 20th of July, and borough claims on the 31st of August. As the law stood, the registration of the year 1860 would last until the 31st of December, 1861: therefore, in the event of the Bill passing, and being too late for the present year's registration, the register of the year 1860 would be the register of voters until the end of 1861; and assuming that an election occurred next year, the new constituent body would not be on the register at all. By the 20th section of the Bill the new voters were to remain, subject to the conditions at present affecting voters, and were to be entitled to be placed on the county and borough registers, on and after 1860. But the register of 1860 was in force for the whole of 1861; consequently those not registered in 1860 could not vote till 1862. This being the case, he wanted to know whether the Government contemplated a dissolution on the passing of this Bill; if so, they surely could not mean the election to take place on the old constituency. What a manifest injustice this would be, and what alarm and confusion it would excite in the country. He did not ask the Government whether they meant to dissolve on the passing of this Bill; that was a question of policy for themselves to decide; but circumstances might bring about a dissolution in the spring without the Government intending it. The Government were just then in the heyday of their popularity; but in the height of prosperity calamities might sometimes happen; and the Government might be wrecked suddenly— Like ships that have gone down at sea, When heaven was all tranquillity. A dissolution might take place in spite of them, and he hoped that the Government would state whether they meant to introduce a subsidiary Bill, or to rely on the law as it stood, by which the new constituency could have no votes till 1862.

SIR GEORGE LEWIS

said, the Government were quite ready to go into Committee on the Reform Bill whenever it should please the House to read it the second time, but he did not think their debates on the Bill would be abridged by their proceeding then to discuss its clauses with respect either to registration or any other point. He trusted therefore that the hon. and learned Member would forgive him if he did not follow him through the somewhat long argument he had addressed to the House. He could only say that the clauses relating to registration which had been introduced into the Bill were not the result of oversight, but were deliberately considered by the Government, who thought they had a clear view of the effect which those clauses would have in the event of the Bill passing in time for the registration of the present year. The Bill of last year necessarily contained a number of elaborate clauses with respect to registration, because it introduced a number of new and peculiar franchises which could not have been dealt with under the existing law. But inasmuch as the present Bill merely proposed to extend existing franchises, and not to introduce any franchise of a new description, all the Government intended to do was simply to make the existing machinery for registration applicable to the extended franchises. The provisions of the Bill were quite adequate for that purpose; but if it should turn out that, owing to the lateness of the period at which the Bill might be passed, Amendments would be required in the clauses, he and his Colleagues would be glad to consider that question in the Committee. Before he sat down, he wished to refer briefly to a statement made by the right hon. Baronet the Member for Droitwich (Sir John Pakington), with respect to a gentleman who was employed in the first instance to collect electoral statistics. He was glad to find that it was the general opinion on both sides of the House that the Government acted with good faith and sincerity in seeking to obtain the Returns in question, with the view of guiding their own decision and ultimately the decision of the House. They were uncertain, when they began their inquiries last autumn, as to the best mode of obtaining the information. The mode which first occurred to them was that of employing certain persons, chiefly barristers, to make inquiries in a number of selected boroughs, in the hope that those boroughs might serve as specimens for the entire country. Mr. Vernon Harcourt was the first of the persons so employed. He visited two or three boroughs, but he reported to the Government that it was extremely difficult, without going through the rate-books, and submitting to an amount of drudgery which barristers would not willingly incur, to obtain accurate results, and he added that, in his opinion, a partial inquiry into a limited number of selected boroughs would not be satisfactory. Thereupon the Government abandoned the mode of inquiry which they had adopted in the first instance, and determined to send instructions through the Poor Law Board to every borough in the kingdom. Mr. Vernon Harcourt had no connection with the second inquiry, but it was conducted entirely by the officers of the Poor Law, who received a small remuneration in order to insure greater accuracy. The Return on the table was obtained by the Poor Law Board. His impression, derived from all the information he had received on the subject, and confirmed by inquiries instituted for the purpose by the Poor Law Board, was that, in respect to boroughs, the column of gross estimated rental, as distinguished from the column containing the rateable value, represented on the whole with tolerable accuracy the rent paid by the tenant to the landlord. He was quite aware that in particular cases inaccuracy existed, but for legislative purposes it might be taken as an approximation sufficiently close to guide that House to a practical conclusion. It was clear that no statement of that kind could be strictly correct, and some discrepancies between the rent really paid and the gross estimated rental as entered in the rate-book must exist, though it was not likely that in any considerable number of cases a higher rental was entered in the rate-book than that actually paid. It might be presumed that, where there was a difference, it was something less than more than the real rent. Therefore, the error must undoubtedly be on the side of deficiency. The matter was one of fact, no doubt, and it was no imputation on the accuracy of the Returns if it should prove on inquiry that the gross estimated rental did not approximate closely to the real rental, for that was a question beyond the Return. If it could be shown that the belief of the Government on that point was wrong, he should be quite ready to admit, like the noble Lord the Member for King's Lynn, that he was in error. The Government had no particular object in the question except to ascertain the truth. A material circumstance, however, had been pointed out by the hon. Member the original author of the Assessment Act, that in the original estimates founded on these Returns credit had been given for every- thing between £10 and £6. If the hon. Member's arguments were correct it was clear that a large portion of those under £10 must in fact be existing voters; therefore, whatever was added from those between £6 and £5 must to a certain, if not to an equal, extent, be compensated by the deductions made for those between £10 and £9, or between £9 and £8, but as the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Oxfordshire (Mr. Henley) had remarked, there might probably be a greater tendency to undervalue in the lower than in the upper strata.

SIR HENRY WILLOUGHBY

said, he should like to know if any application had been made to the Income Tax Commissioners relative to these Returns. He had heard of a case where the Commissioners had put 25 per cent on the gross estimated rental, and when remonstrated with, the reply was that the properly of the parish was notoriously rated low to reduce the quota to be paid towards the county and highway rates.

MR. BOVILL

said, there could be no doubt the Government had done their best to obtain correct information; but he believed a mistake had been made in addressing the returns to the poor law auditors, men who practically knew nothing about the subject, instead of the magistrates at quarter sessions, or barristers who had been at quarter sessions, and who knew practically what the fact was. He was in a position to inform the House, on the authority of the town-clerk, that the gross estimated rental in Guildford was in every case below the actual value, but that the proportion in which that difference existed was anything but uniform; and the town-clerk added that he noticed, on inspecting the rate-book, that some houses were put down to the gross rental at little more than one-half of the actual rent, and he thought that from one-third to one-fourth was about the average difference between the gross estimated rental and the actual rental. Under all the circumstances it was evident that more accurate information should be obtained.