§ Order for Committee read.
§ SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH moved, that the Corrupt Practices Bill be referred to the same Committee. In the present year the Parliamentary and Municipal Elections Bill had been brought in at an early period, so as to allow ample time for consideration, and as the House had already affirmed the principle of the Bill on two previous occasions, he did not now mean, nor would he during the progress of the measure propose to question that principle, but any Amendments he might offer would refer to points of detail. He wished, however, to know why the Government, in the present Session, separated the Corrupt Practices Bill from the Parliamentary and Municipal Elections Bill. The main portion of the former measure, likely to give rise to discussion, related to personation and to a provision for striking off a vote from the total number recorded for a candidate, if a person were proved to have been bribed to vote for him, and these were matters connected with the proposal to establish the system of secret voting. The Parliamentary Elections Bill introduced a new system of voting, which was admitted to be liable to certain evils, and yet the Government declined to provide in the same Bill the remedies against those evils. It could hardly be argued that delay would be caused by combining these two Bills into one, for if the Government adhered to their declared intention that the two measures were to proceed pari passu, it would be just as easy and as expeditious to consider them together as separately. But besides, by dividing the measure into two, both parts of it were materially injured. During the last three years, whether before the Select Committee, or in the various Bills introduced by the Government, the question of Parliamentary and municipal elections had always been considered as a whole. Yet, now the Government proposed to apply the 1163 Ballot to both, but to legislate against corrupt practices only in the former. And this, although no one could deny that municipal elections were at least as liable to corruption as Parliamentary. The towns, indeed, throughout the country might be more thoroughly demoralized in the case of the former than the latter, inasmuch as they occurred more frequently. Why, again, were safeguards against personation to be taken in Parliamentary elections, while in municipal they were allowed to run unchecked? In the Corrupt Practices Bill, also, the mode in which, on a scrutiny, a vote was to be struck off was the subject of certain provisions, and surely similar provisions were equally necessary with reference to municipal elections? There were two other clauses also in the Corrupt Practices Bill which provided that any payments made, except through the agents, should be considered corrupt payments, and that a room should not be employed in a public-house for the purposes of a Parliamentary election. Why, then, he should like to know, was a candidate at municipal elections to be allowed to make what payments he pleased without their being deemed corrupt, and to hire rooms, if he thought fit, in every public-house in every ward in a borough? There could be no doubt, that if no further safeguards were to be introduced municipal elections under the Ballot would be more corrupt than they had hitherto been. If, moreover, such loopholes as those he had referred to were left open, it was clear that the provisions by which it was expected that a check would be placed on corruption and personation at Parliamentary elections would fail to secure that object. Three years back notorious cases had been tried before the Election Judges, in which it had been distinctly proved that boroughs had been corrupted at municipal elections simply for the purpose of rendering the Parliamentary elections safe. The same process might be repeated with the greatest possible ease, and so serious a blot as that would scarcely, he thought, be approved by the House, although it might have escaped the attention of the Government. Many hon. Members who cared only about the Ballot might think it unimportant to provide any safeguards to secure purity and honesty in the exercise of the secret vote; but the House, 1164 he hoped, would not concur in that opinion. There were other improvements in our electoral system not less necessary or important, which ought to be considered, and he hoped, therefore, the House would not give its sanction to the timid and half-hearted course which the Government had adopted. For his own part, he maintained that by taking the Bill separately the House would be doing all in its power to prevent corrupt practices at elections from being dealt with for some time to come. It had been admitted that both measures must stand or fall together; and he hoped, under those circumstances, the House would assent to his proposal that they should be fused, and the system of secret voting, if it was to be adopted at all, thus made as far as possible satisfactory.
§
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That the Parliamentary and Municipal Elections Bill and the Corrupt Practices Bill be committed to the same Committee."—(Sir Michael Hicks-Beach.)