PARLIAMENTARY ELECTORS BILL. (Hansard, 2 December 1852)

§ SIR DE LACY EVANS
moved for leave to bring in a Bill to extend the period for payment of rates and taxes for the Elective Franchise. By the Bill of last year on the subject, as it passed the House of Commons, it was provided that the payment of the rates should be made as enacted by the Reform Bill, on or before the 20th of July in each year, hut that the rates so to be paid should be not those which had fallen due on or before the 5th of April previously, but those which had fallen due on or before the preceding 6th of October. In the House of Lords, however, the period was altered from the 6th of October to the 5th of January, and with the date so altered, the Bill was eventually passed. The Bill he now asked leave to introduce was to extend the period backward from the 5th of January to the 10th of October. The principle of the Bill had been repeatedly affirmed by the House.

§ MR. WALPOLE
said, that if the object of the Bill was still to require the payment of the rate on or before the 20th of July, but that the payment then made must be in respect of rates due in the preceding month of October, instead of the month 824 of January, as required by the Bill passed last year, he did not see any objection to its introduction, though he reserved to himself the right of opposing it on a future stage, should he consider it necessary so to do.

§ MR. T. DUNCOMBE
said, he was convinced that the Bill would be unsatisfactory to the country. In fact, he regarded the proposal of the hon. and gallant Member (Sir De L. Evans) as altogether a retrograde movement. The objections of the public were directed against the whole of the ratepaying clauses of the Reform Bill. They contended that Borough electors ought to be put upon the same footing as County electors—that the payment of rates was no condition for the registration of the latter, and that it ought not to he so for the former. He condemned the Bill as a retrogressive measure, because the measure introduced by the noble Lord the Member for the city of London (Lord John Russell) last year abolished the payment of Assessed taxes as a condition of registration; and the noble Lord was, therefore, in point of fact, in advance of the hon. and gallant Member. The hon. and gallant Member might bring in his Bill if he liked, so far as he (Mr. Duncombe) was concerned; but he must enter his protest on the part of the public that it was only trifling with and frittering away a greater and much more important question.