COMMITTEE. (Hansard, 13 May 1867)

§ MR. CHILDERS
said, the object of this Bill was to substitute for the office of Vice President of the Board of Trade a Secretary having a salary of £1,500 per annum, who should not be compelled to resign his seat on accepting office. He approved of the measure so far as it would save £500 by substituting a Secretary for the Vice President of the Board of Trade; but he thought that part of it which proposed that the Secretary should not vacate his seat on his appointment was objectionable. This question was in truth closely connected with a much larger subject, which must some day undergo discussion—namely, the question of vacating seats upon the accession to or transfer of offices. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Stephen Cave) had been in error on a former occasion in representing that no official in the position of a Secretary vacated his seat by the acceptance of office. The Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, although holding the position of Secretary to another Minister, invariably submitted himself for re-election to his constituents.

§ MR. STEPHEN CAVE
said, that if the Government were proposing to establish a new principle in this matter there would be great force in his hon. Friend (Mr. Childers') remarks. But they did not make any such proposal. They abolished an office which carried with it the obligation of re-election, and substituted for it an office which, by analogy with the corresponding offices in other departments, did not impose such an obligation. If an Under Secretaryship were created of the former character, they would be establishing a new principle, and breaking through an old-established rule. It would be most unreasonable that, while the Under Secretaries in the great offices of the Secretaries 476 of State were exempted from the necessity of re-election, this obligation should be imposed upon the Under Secretary of the Board of Trade. His hon. Friend had instanced the Chief Secretary for Ireland; but his office was more akin to that of a Secretary of State. He was practically head of a Department, and was a Privy Councillor. The provision for vacation of seats by Members accepting office was originally intended, as hon. Members knew, to prevent the House of Commons being swamped by a multitude of placemen. It was, in fact, forced upon the Commons by the rejection of their provision for limiting the number of office-holders. It had been enacted by the Act of Settlement, A.D. 1700, that no person holding office or place of profit under the Crown should be capable of serving as a Member of Parliament. This provision proving, as might have been expected, extremely inconvenient, was repealed in 1706, by the statute of 6 Anne, called the Act of Security. From the great historian Hallam they learnt that when a clause called the long clause in this Act of Security—which while limiting the number of placemen, admitted many more than now sit in the House of Commons—was thrown out by the Lords, the Commons, finding themselves unable to maintain their ground, consoled themselves for the enforced presence of an unlimited number of placemen by this provision for the vacation of seats by Members accepting office. The enactment was, in fact, originally, not for the expression of the opinion of a constituency on the acceptance of office by their representative, but for the absolute exclusion of redundant placemen. The object was loss of seat, not reelection. It might be said that a constituency ought to have the power of declaring whether it wished to be represented by an official or not, but when had such a plea in reality been urged? When a Member under such circumstances had failed in his re-election, had it not been in every instance from some other cause? What greater anomaly could there be than this, that when the first Lord of the Admiralty became Secretary for War in the same Administration he had to be re-elected, whereas, if the Government resigned, and he changed sides, he might remain as First Lord of the Admiralty under the new Government, repudiating all the principles upon which he was elected, and yet would not be obliged to go to his constituents? This regulation had long been felt 477 on all sides to be an anachronism, an obsolete provision, altogether unsuited to an age in which we certainly could not complain of the excessive power of the Crown; a provision which in reality created annoyance, delay, and expense, and benefited no one except those who gained a livelihood in the troubled waters of elections. These remarks pointed rather to the general question; but whatever might be the opinion of hon. Members on this, he did not think they would wish to extend the application of the rule to an Under Secretaryship, an office the appointment of which was, strictly speaking, not in the Crown but in the head of the Department. The Return lately presented to the House showed no increase in Crown patronage, for though there was one more office than in 1827, the acceptance of which did not vacate the seat, there were five fewer offices of profit altogether, and there was this further difference between the present office of Vice President and that of Under Secretary, that the Vice President held two offices which vacated seats, one being that of Paymaster General—if that could be called an office of profit to which no salary is attached. This office, however, would not be attached to that of Under Secretary. He hoped the House would allow the clause to pass without the proposed alteration.

§ MR. NEATE
said, the arguments of the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Cave) were entirely conclusive. The reference to the Chief Secretary for Ireland was inappropriate, because the Lord Lieutenant was the locum tenens of the Queen and the representative of Royalty in that country. His Chief Secretary was not only a high officer of State but frequently sat in the Cabinet.

§ MR. SERJEANT GASELEE
said, he must insist on the importance of re-election upon accession to office. If an hon. Gentleman who had recently crossed the floor of the House, and was now a Judge, had not sat for a close borough, he would probably have paid the penalty of exclusion for his change of opinions.

LORD NAAS
said, the allusion just indulged in was plainly intended for his right hon. Friend Judge Morris. But the statement of the hon. and learned Gentleman was entirely erroneous. Galway was no more a close borough than the City of London. His right hon. Friend, in the interval between the accession to office of the present Government and his becoming 478 a Judge, was twice elected by the constituency by very large majorities.

§ MR. CHILDERS
said, he would not put the Committee to the trouble of dividing.