§ Bill, as amended, considered.
§
New clause, to follow Clause 32—
(Abolition of assessors.)
After the passing of this Act, assessors shall not be elected in any ward of any Municipal borough, and no Municipal Election need not be held before the assessors or their deputies, but may be held before the mayor, alderman, or returning officer only."—(Mr. William Edward Forster,)
—brought up, and read the first and second time, agreed to, and added.
§ MR. JAMESmoved the addition of a new clause after Clause 4, making the register conclusive as to the right to vote; but providing that any person whose name was not on the register, or who was forbidden to vote, or who was legally incapacitated from voting, but who nevertheless voted, should be liable to a penalty not exceeding £20.
§ MR. W. E. FORSTERsaid, he had no objection to the principle of the clause, provided the words inflicting a penalty were struck out. That could be effected by omitting all the words of the clause after "force."
§ MR. JAMESexpressed his willingness to see it expunged from the clause, but warned the House that some such provision would be found necessary.
§ Clause (Qualification of voter) brought up, and read the first and second time; amended, and added.
§ MR. DIXONmoved a new clause authorizing ballot-boxes used at municipal elections to be lent for Parliamentary Elections.
§ MR. W. E. FORSTERsaid, he willingly acceded to the Amendment, for he thought the proposed clause was valuable, as tending to economy in the expenses of elections.
§ Clause (Ballot boxes used at Municipal Elections to be lent for Parliamentary Election) brought up, and read the first and second time; amended, and added.
1008§ SIR JOHN GRAYmoved, in Clause 2, page 1, line 21, to leave out "noon," and insert "ten in the forenoon;" and leave out "five," and insert "three." He proposed the Amendment for the purpose of changing the hours within which an election might be held from noon until 5 in the afternoon to from 10 until 3 in the afternoon.
§ Amendment agreed to.
§ MR. STAPLETONmoved, in Clause 2, page 2, line 8, after "seconder," to leave out "and by eight other qualified electors in a Parliamentary Election." There were ample safeguards in the Bill against the nomination of show candidates, and the provision in question would give rise to the utmost confusion and annoyance in small boroughs.
§ Amendment proposed, in page 2, line 8, after the word "seconder," to leave out the words "and by eight other qualified electors in a Parliamentary election."—(Mr. Stapleton.
§ Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Bill."
§ MR. W. E. FORSTERsaid, he must object to the Amendment, on the ground that it was desirable that a certain number of electors should show their confidence in the person nominated. He hoped the words would be retained.
§ MR. NEWDEGATEsaid, he was also in favour of the retention of the words, because those eight persons were the only ones who could vote openly.
§ MR. BERESFORD HOPEsaid, that if a man could not get ten persons to nominate him he was scarcely likely to obtain ten votes, and any candidate who could not get that number of individuals to vote for him would place himself in a very ridiculous position, and would impose much unnecessary trouble upon others.
§ Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
§ MR. M'CARTHY DOWNINGmoved to omit the words that required that there should be squares upon the ballot papers in which the electors should make their marks.
§ MR. W. E. FORSTERsaid, that Government, having made inquiries, thought that it would be better to omit the words. He therefore proposed to amend subsection 12 of Clause 3, by striking out 1009 the words which required a voter to place his mark in the figure of a square printed on the right hand side of the paper, and to substitute others, merely requiring the voter to place his mark on the right hand side of the name of the candidate printed on the ballot paper for whom he intended to vote.
§ MR. MUNTZsaid, he was present on an occasion when the form of ballot paper having been presented to seven hon. Members of that House to fill in, six, of whom he was one, out of the seven, had placed their marks in the wrong place. Under those circumstances, it had become absolutely necessary that the form of ballot paper should be altered.
§ MR. CAVENDISH BENTINCKsaid, he regarded that failure of the ballot paper, which had been agreed to by the House after considerable discussion, as a proof of the soundness of the objections which had been raised to that innovation on their old form of election.
§ Amendment agreed to.
§ MR. RAIKESmoved, in Clause 9, page 9, after line 22, to insert as a new sub-section—
In a Parliamentary Election the returning officer shall cause that portion of the register of the electors which contains the names of the electors to whom any polling station is allotted, to be examined during the days next preceding the day fixed for the poll by the presiding officer at such polling station (including the returning officer where he is the presiding officer), with the assistance of the overseers, assistant overseer, or collector of the rates in each parish (which assistance he and they shall give as required by the returning officer) and such presiding officer on examining the list shall mark the words 'dead,' or 'out of the United Kingdom,' or 'duplicate,' against every elector whom he knows or is informed by such overseer, assistant overseer, or collector to be dead or out of the United Kingdom, or to be entered elsewhere on the register as the case may be, and every presiding officer before delivering a ballot paper to any person claiming to be an elector whose name has been so marked, shall put to him the questions and administer the oath specified in Part One of the first Schedule to this Act.
§ MR. W. E. FORSTERsaid, he had no objection to offer to the proposed Amendment of the hon. Member for Chester (Mr. Raikes), with the exception of the word "duplicate," and other words depending on it, which he must ask the hon. Member to allow to be struck out of the sub-section.
§ MR. RAIKESsaid, he would assent to the omission of the words as proposed by the right hon. Gentleman.
§ Clause 9, new sub-section, to follow sub-section 3—(Mr. Raikes)—brought up, and read the first time.
§ On Question, That the sub-section be read the second time,
§ MR. W. E. FORSTERproposed, as an Amendment, in line 10, after the word "or," to omit the word "duplicate;" and in line 12, after the word "Kingdom," the words "or to be entered elsewhere on the register."
§ Amendment agreed to; words struck out accordingly: sub-section read the second time, agreed to, and added.
MR. GOLDSMID (for Mr. MAHON),moved, in Clause 9, sub-section 8, after "or," to leave out "otherwise," and insert "by other physical cause."
§ MR. W. E. FORSTERsaid, he had no objection to the proposed Amendment.
§ Amendment agreed to.
§ MR. NEWDEGATEsaid, the Amendment of which he had given Notice applied to Clause 16 of the Bill, as reprinted; and it was that the words "a Secretary of State" be struck out in line 19, for the purpose of inserting the words—
The judge appointed under the Statute thirty-first and thirty-second of Victoria, Chapter one hundred and twenty-five, for the trial of Election Petitions.That Amendment, and his subsequent Notices, indicated his objections not only to that clause, but also to Clauses 18 and 21. He had ventured on a former occasion, when the House was in Committee on the Bill, to draw the attention of the few hon. Members who were then present, to the very serious effect which would be produced by investing the Secretary of State, or rather "a Secretary of State," with the extensive power to make rules with reference to the conduct of elections which the Bill proposed. That would be a complete departure from the system of elections in the country. Hitherto, the House had been especially careful that no political officer, and especially no political officer of the Government, should be in any way concerned in the direction or regulation of elections of Members to sit in that House; and the House went so far as in 1011 the year 1866 to divest itself altogether of its jurisdiction over Election Petitions, and to commit the trial of Election Petitions to the Judges of the land, who were invited to select from their own number three Judges, who should try the questions arising out of contested elections. The House was jealous of its own feelings. It was afraid that partizan feelings had interfered with the justice of its decisions; and it regarded the matter as so vitally affecting the constitution of the House, so vitally affecting the character of the laws of the country, and so essentially affecting also the respect which had hitherto been entertained for the law in the country—which respect for the law had been one of main securities for the peace and order of society—that it determined that henceforth all such questions as to elections should be tried by the Judges. But previously to that, the Legislature had committed to the Judges of the land, by the statutes which regulated the registration of voters, the appointment of revising barristers, for the purpose of securing the due franchise of the electors of the country, and the Judges were in the habit of making the rules which directed the conduct of the revising barristers. They knew that among the Judges there were many who had been ornaments of that House, having filled the office of Solicitor or Attorney General. There was, therefore, an abundant supply of legal knowledge, and of practical knowledge also, upon all those questions if they could assume that there was any practical knowledge whatever with respect to the institution of a totally novel mode of voting, a mode of secret voting which would subvert the ancient system of election, and which was intended to change the whole of the habits of the people. He was therefore confident of this, that among the Judges there were eminent persons who were as well qualified as any persons could be, to deal with questions that might arise out of that novel institution of secret voting. But his object was this—He was told that officials, ex-officials as well as the present Government, would not interfere to deprive Secretaries of State of the powers which would be conferred upon them by the Bill. It had become very much the habit of the House to transfer power after power to the Executive. They had 1012 just passed an Act for creating a new Secretary of State. Whether it was from indolence on the part of the House, or whether it was that the majority of the House thought that the people of this country were tired of the freedom which they had so long enjoyed, he knew not, but every Session lately had shown him that the constitutional privileges of the subject, and now the constitutional privileges and independence of the House, were less and less valued in the House itself. He believed, moreover, that out out-of-doors there was a growing spirit of discontent at that apparent laxity on the part of the House, and that the people of this country did not view with indifference the transfer of their time-honoured local independence and self-government to officers of the State; and he was convinced of this, that if there was not, at present, an impression abroad that the Bill was not destined to become law during the present Session, the subject to which he now called the attention of the House would have occupied a far more prominent position in the consideration of the public than it did at present. They had no reason to congratulate France upon the success of her electoral system under the late Empire. ["Question!"] It was strictly to the question, and he alluded to it, because in France the Government of the day, sitting as they did in a permitted Parliament, were authorized to interfere in the elections throughout the country—authorized very much in the manner which that clause proposed to authorize the Secretary of State; and it was perfectly notorious, for it was published in all the newspapers, that the Prefects were the agents of the Government—officials who occupied the position which corresponded to that in which the Bill would place their Secretary of State—received secret instructions as to how they should regulate the elections, in order to favour the return of the Government candidates. Let them for one moment examine the powers which the Bill contained. In Clause 15 there was a remnant of the old system. It provided that in every Parliamentary Election the return of the Member should be made to the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery. Now, the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery was not a political officer. He was a judicial officer, and his character gave a security 1013 that the return should be duly recorded; but let the House mark this—that function was the only function retained to the ancient jurisdiction, and it was a function which never came into play until the election had been consummated. Now, look at Clause 16. By Clause 16 the Secretary of State was to proscribe to whom, when, and in what manner copies of the marked register should be given—that was, of the register marked so as to indicate who of the electors had voted. Now that must be the basis of any Election Petition, or of any scrutiny; and the whole jurisdiction over that which was to form the basis of an inquiry, if any inquiry was to be made, was to be transferred wholesale to the political officer of the Government, an officer, who must be, according to the present system of that House, a political partizan, and might be a Peer; who would, except for the provisions of the Bill, if it passed, by reason of his position as a Member of the other House of Parliament, be disqualified from taking part in any of their elections. He recalled that, in order to show the wide departure in that particular from the ancient system by which the freedom of the country was secured, through securing the purity of elections to the House, and the freedom of those elections from control on the part of the Crown, and by the Crown he now meant the Administration of the day, which must consist of partizans representing the majority of the House of Commons for the time being. Let him also call attention to another point, to Clause 18, under which that political officer was from time to time to make, alter, repeal, or add to any rules respecting the matters following:—The erection of polling stations, the construction of ballot-boxes, the shape, size, colour, texture, and mode of printing the ballot papers; the nature of the instruments to be used in stamping or marking the ballot papers—and now let the House observe—and he may make rules, he has a legislative authority to make rules, touching any matter authorized by the Act to be prescribed by him; and, in the last subsection, touching any other matter or thing required to be provided for the purpose of carrying the Act into execution; and, further, it is proposed that any rules which the Secretary of State might think fit to make in pursuance of 1014 that section, shall be deemed to be within the powers conferred by the Act, and shall be of the same force as if enacted in that Act, and shall be judicially noted. Therefore, with respect to all these undefined subjects, the Secretary of State was appointed to legislate, and the Courts of Law were commanded to recognize his legislation as valid; his legislation being embodied in those rules which, if the Bill passed into law, must intimately affect the whole system under which candidates should become Members of that House. But it did not stop there. By Clause 21 all questions arising as to the division of the country into polling districts, which, by the present law, were committed to the independent jurisdiction of the local authorities, were by that clause to be reported to the Secretary of State; and if reported to the Secretary of State, it must be held that the rules for regulating the division of the country into polling districts were to be made under his authority; and although there was a provision that the Secretary of State should report his conduct to the House, and the rules which he had made, altered, repealed, or sanctioned, he would never report that which he might have done to the House, until it had taken effect on the elections, and very probably returned him a majority, which, owing their seats in great measure to those regulations, would be sure to sanction whatever the Secretary of State had done. He was anxious that the House should calmly consider that approximation to a vicious system, and he wished the House to test the effects of that system by an extreme case. He might be told that they had not here an Empire in the sense of the French Empire; but he would give the House an illustration of that to which he alluded—of the influence of committing to political officers the power of regulating elections during the second Republic in France. He had with him a copy of the Circular which was issued by M. Ledru Rollin, as the representative of the Provisional Government in France in 1848. It was a Circular addressed to the local commissioners on the 13th of March in that year, and in it M. Rollin said—Cause, in all points of your department, the meeting of electoral committees, examine closely the qualification of the candidates, and stop only at those who appear to present the strongest gua- 1015 rantee of Republican opinion, and the greatest chance of success. No compromises; no complaisance. Let the day of election be the triumph of the Revolution.Now, that was not a novel system of interference invented by M. Ledru Rollin, though he (Mr. Newdegate) admitted that it was an exaggeration of the system of interference which was habitual in France on the part of the political officers of the Government, acting, as that very clause proposed, in many respects, upon and through the local authorities. He admitted that that Circular of M. Ledru Rollin was condemned; but it was condemned only as an exaggeration of the French system. He knew he might be told that the provisions in the Bill were not such as vitally to affect the election; but against that he set the conduct of the Legislature when it would not commit even registration matters to political officers, but reserved them to the Judges who were non-political, in order to secure fairness and freedom of election. He had now stated his objections to those clauses; he should not, however, move his Amendment, and for this reason—In the present state of the House it would only lead to a division unworthy of the subject. But he took that opportunity of drawing the attention of the House and of the country to the introduction of that novel principle—in contradistinction to the principle according to which the jurisdiction of that House itself in the matter of Election Petitions had been set aside by the Legislature, and the trial of all Election Petitions committed to the Judges. Her Majesty's Government had induced the majority of the House to reverse that arrangement, which was the latest exemplification of the ancient principle, by which the independence of the House of Commons had ever been secured, or rather secured during the last 200 years, which was surely not the darkest period in their Parliamentary history; the Government sought to induce the majority of the House to arm the Secretary of State, who must be a political officer, and who might be a Peer, with the power of framing regulations which must deeply affect the conduct of election to seats in the House, if the Bill should ever become law. He thanked the House for having allowed him to express to them the deep conviction he felt that, by adopting those 1016 clauses, they were entering upon a dangerous course, and that it would be far better they should even now, if the House were in "a condition really to consider" the subject, reflect upon the danger of the course upon which they were invited to embark.
§ MR. W. E. FORSTERsaid, the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Newdegate) was hardly acting in accordance with the Rules of the House in making a rather long statement which he did not follow up by a Motion. By adopting that course, he was precluding hon. Members from the opportunity of replying to the arguments he had used.
§ MR. SPEAKERsaid, that the hon. Member had trangressed the Rules of the House.
§ MR. NEWDEGATEsaid, that in that case, and not wishing to prevent hon. Members from replying to his observations, he begged to move the Amendment which stood in his name.
§
Amendment proposed,
In page 12, lines 28 and 29, to leave out the words "a Secretary of State," in order to insert the words "the judge appointed under the Statute thirty-first and thirty-second of Victoria, chapter one hundred and twenty-five, for the trial of Election Petitions,"—(Mr. Newdegate,)
—instead thereof.
§ Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Bill."
§ MR. W. E. FORSTERsaid, the clause would not give the power to the Secretary of State to affect the return of Members as the hon. Gentleman the Member for North Warwickshire seemed to apprehend. It was found impossible to insert some provisions of detail in the Bill, and as some authority must be established for making those provisions, the responsible Government of the day appeared to be the proper authority; a security against abuse being found in this—that the regulations should be laid on the Table of the House for three weeks. The Secretary of State had no power whatever under Clause 20 to control the local authority. The hon. Member wished to give the Judges the power to make the regulations instead of the Secretary of State; but he was not 1017 aware of any case in which an administrative power was given to the Judges.
MR. GILPINsaid, he agreed, to a great extent, in what had been stated by the hon. Gentleman the Member for North Warwickshire. To make the Bill acceptable to the public it should have, at least, the appearance of unquestionable fairness. Appeals on political points should be to parties who were assumed to be free from political bias; but no one could say that a Secretary of State was likely to be free from party bias, because, if he was, in all probability he would not be Secretary of State. Much less harm would result in extending the duties of the Judges than that an impression should go abroad that the decision of political disputes should be left to a party man.
§ MR. JAMESsaid, he thought there was sufficient protection in the Secretary of State rendering himself liable to the censure of that House for the slightest abuse of his authority. It would be impossible to find persons less capable of performing these duties than the Judges. The majority of the Judges had no experience of election matters, and probably it would be better if none of them had; and the last thing they should do was to ask men who knew nothing about elections to make laws for their regulation. By the terms of the Amendment, if carried, it would be in the power of the then Election Judges to make within three years, if no election took place, nine different regulations for as many different ballot-boxes and the number of the elections.
§ SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACHsaid, he agreed that it was not desirable to place this power either in the Secretary of State or the Judges. The Secretary of State must be a party man, and his decision would, of course, be supported by his party. In former days it was the practice for the Speaker to name the Election Committee, and he would suggest that the Speaker should be substituted for the Home Secretary.
§ MR. M. CHAMBERSsaid, he also objected to the decision being left to the Home Secretary or the Election Judges. He suggested that the Judges of the Court of Common Pleas should have the power. It was common knowledge among lawyers that when an Act of Parliament was passed, the duty of framing the rules was imposed on the particular 1018 Courts which had jurisdiction over the subject-matter; and no one could deny that the Court of Common Pleas had jurisdiction over this subject-matter; and he could not but think, if it could be accomplished, that it would be exceedingly desirable that his right hon. Friend who had the conduct of the Bill should, not in the terms in which the Amendment was moved, accept the Amendment; and that he should see whether he could not make the Judges of the Court of Common Pleas do that duty which was endeavoured to be imposed upon the Secretary of State for the Home Department for the time being, who was assuredly always a party man.
§ Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
§ Clause 26 (Prohibition against hiring rooms at publichouse).
§ MR. DIXONmoved the insertion in the clause of words, the effect of which was to free candidates from the penalty imposed by the clause, where they might happen to come from a distance, and might not be able to find a lodging in a town, in which case they would have to go to an hotel.
§ MR. W. E. FORSTERsaid, he would accept the Amendment.
§ Amendment agreed to.
MR. GOLDSMIDmoved the omission of the clause, which appeared to him to be quite unwarrantable. He had been in many places where there was no room whatever to be had except the public room of the local hotel. At the last election he had had to address the electors in two or three different places, and in such a case it was utterly impossible to carry about a tent, which, moreover, in wet weather would afford very inadequate shelter to the constituents.
§ Amendment proposed, to leave out Clause 26.—(Mr. Goldsmid.)
§ MR. C. S. READhoped the clause would be omitted, which would operate very inconveniently in counties.
§ MR. EASTWICKsaid, it would cause extreme inconvenience also with respect to boroughs, and he hoped the clause would be omitted.
§ MR. CANDLISHbelieved there was no more valuable and subsidiary clause in the Bill, and he was very unwilling to believe that any candidate who was 1019 extremely desirous of addressing his constituents would not find out the means of doing so, without going to a publichouse.
§ MR. M. CHAMBERSsaid, he represented the borough of Devonport, which had reformed itself, and had resolved not to permit its candidates to have meetings or committee-rooms in publichouses. He had, therefore, had to address his constituents frequently at open-air meetings, and he could not understand why his bucolic Friends, who lived in the country when they came among the rustics whom they wished to be admired by, could not address them in the open air, either in the summer evenings or spring mornings. If they could not meet in the open air, why could they not use a threshing barn or some larger building? To meet at a publichouse meant simply that there should be plenty of drinking.
§ MR. BERESFORD HOPEsaid, as the clause originally stood, meetings in publichouses were prohibited, but there was a reasonable provision that certain meetings should be allowed at which candidates could address their constituents. The clause was now absolute nonsense, endeavouring as it did to enforce what common sense showed to be utterly impossible—namely, the absolute prohibition of meetings in publichouses, although in many boroughs the public room at an inn was the only public room in the place. He would, however, prohibit the holding of any political meetings in beershops.
§ Question put, "That the Clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill."
§ The House divided:—Ayes 71; Noes 30: Majority 41.
§ Bill to be read the third time To-morrow, at Two of the clock.