HC Deb 29 April 1872 vol 210 cc1936-46

New Clause (Voting papers for sick, infirm, or disabled persons,)—(Mr. Wheelhouse,)—brought up, and read the first time.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Clause be read a second time."

MR. G. BENTINCK

, in moving that the Chairman report Progress, said, he believed, after the answer just given by the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government, that it was a fair subject for consideration whether the measure ought further to be proceeded with. When the Parliamentary and Municipal Elections and Corrupt Practices Bills were introduced, there was an implied understanding that they should proceed pari passû, for the reason that there was a close connection between them. Notwithstanding that, the right hon. Gentleman had just informed the House that he could give no assurance that the Corrupt Practices Bill could be dealt with at a period of the Session when it could receive the proper attention of the House. Now, past experience showed that when a Bill had been divided into two parts Her Majesty's Government was quite content to pass one Bill and drop the other, and that course of con-duet having been adopted with the measures under discussion, it was virtually a breach of faith with the House and ought to be reprobated. The right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill (Mr. W. E. Forster) stated, when introducing the measure, that his hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General would bring forward a Bill to deal with the question of personation which was included in the Ballot Bill of last year. The explanations, too, given at that time by the Government showed that it was clearly their intention to proceed with both Bills simultaneously. It was a moot point in the House whether the Ballot Bill would not tend to promote the extension of bribery, and therefore it was thought necessary that with the Ballot Bill more strenuous measures than now existed should be passed for the suppression of bribery. What the Government, however, now proposed to do was to postpone the Corrupt Practices Bill to a period of the Session when it would be practically impossible to give it a fair and careful consideration. The right hon. Gentleman, after saying that the two Bills were so important and involved so much detail that they would be placed separately before the House for their consideration, gave what he could not but regard as a distinct pledge that the Corrupt Practices Bill should be passed that Session. The right hon. Gentleman, who was at the time answering a Question, said— At the same time, he could assure the hon. Gentleman that it was the absolute intention of the Government to do their best to bring the Corrupt Practices Bill under the notice of the House, so that it should that Session be passed into law."—[3 Hansard, ccix. 1171.] After the statement which had been just made by the Prime Minister, however, it was evident that the Bill was virtually to be abandoned. They might, perhaps, be told that it was the only course which was possible when the present pressure of Public Business was considered; but that that excuse would be a very unfortunate one was evident from the fact that the Government allowed the House to be counted out on Friday evening last at half-past 8. Regarding what had occurred as a distinct breach of faith with the House, he thought that they should, before proceeding with the discussion on this Bill, receive an emphatic assurance from the Government that its third reading should not be taken before the Corrupt Practices Bill had been reported. He begged, therefore, to move that the Chairman do now report Progress.

MR. W. E. FORSTER

said, the hon. Gentleman, in charging Government with a breach of faith, had used very strong language, which he (Mr. W. E. Forster) would have felt very keenly were it not that they were accustomed to hear such expressions from him, and derived some consolation from the belief that he did not always mean what he said. As to the charge of breach of faith, the Government could not possibly have more strictly fulfilled the understanding entered into with the House. When introducing this Bill he stated that the Government hoped to pass the Corrupt Practices Bill that Session, and had every determination to do so. They had that hope and determination still. But when the hon. Baronet the Member for East Gloucestershire (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach), on the 29th of February, moved that the two Bills should be referred to the same Committee, the Government assented to the Motion upon the distinct understanding that if they found upon going through Committee that it would be more convenient not to proceed with the Corrupt Practices Bill after having passed through the clauses of the Ballot Bill, they should in that case pledge themselves to take into the Ballot Bill the two clauses of the Corrupt Practices Bill affecting personation connected with the Ballot Bill. That understanding had been fulfilled, and those two clauses had been transferred to that Bill. It was still the hope and intention of the Government to pass the Corrupt Practices Bill as well as the Ballot Bill, and as two clauses of the former Bill had already been dealt with, that measure might be regarded as being in a more forward state than some other Government Bills. He had not the slightest doubt that the House would have an opportunity of considering the Corrupt Practices Bill, or that it would be passed this Session; and he equally thought the hon. Gentleman, in the course he was at present taking, had no desire to impede the passing of the measure under notice. He therefore trusted that he would not press his Motion.

MR. G. BENTINCK

said, he should like the right hon. Gentleman to show the House of what use it was for him to say that it was his fixed determination to pass the Corrupt Practices Bill, when he knew it was impossible to do so. If the Government had taken two clauses from the Corrupt Practices Bill into the Ballot Bill as a security, why had not the Government contented themselves with one Bill instead of two? First, the Government had divided the Bills, then it partially re-united them; surely the Government could approach consistency, and either keep their Bills separate, or else distinctly announce their intention of postponing the consideration of the Corrupt Practices Bill.

MR. W. E. FORSTER

said, the two clauses had been incorporated in the Bill now under consideration, in accordance with what he believed was the generally expressed wish of the House, because they were consequent upon changes in the mode of election introduced by this Bill. The other three clauses were in no way connected with these changes, and, therefore, should properly form a separate matter. The hon. Gentleman might rest assured the Government intended giving those clauses a careful consideration, and hoped the House would do the same, with the impression that the course adopted by the Government was the most suitable.

MR. BERESFORD HOPE

said, that the House had expected that both Bills would be referred to the same Committee; and what could the proposal of the hon. Baronet the Member for East Gloucestershire for referring two Bills to the same Committee mean, but that the two Bills should be moulded into one? It was all very well for the Government to propose that the course which they favoured should be adopted, and no doubt, if it were, it would be of great advantage to them during the hot days of July. The Ballot, however, was only one element of the whole question of election proceedings with which they had to deal.

MR. J. LOWTHER

said, that the House was pledged to deal with corrupt practices long before it was pledged to deal with the Ballot. Two years ago, when he moved for a Select Committee on the subject, the Prime Minister expressed the opinion that the clauses of the Corrupt Practices Bill should be embodied in the Ballot Bill, with a view to the whole being passed into law simultaneously. He (Mr. Lowther) did not then proceed any further, believing that the matter would be better dealt with in a future Session; and accordingly he now trusted at least that ample opportunity would be afforded to the House fully to consider the Bill and correct the glaring anomalies it contained.

MR. G. BENTINCK

said, he had no intention of charging the Vice President with a breach of faith, and as for the Prime Minister, his memory during the present Session had been so strangely defective as to prevent him from recollecting the most striking events of his Parliamentary life, and therefore he equally acquitted him of any intentional breach of faith. He had not moved in this matter with a view to delay the Ballot Bill; but had made his complaint in good faith, believing he had strong grounds for doing so.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

Question put.

The Committee divided:—Ayes 133; Noes 212: Majority 79.

MR. GOURLEY

, in rising to move the following new clause:— That the returning officer in every borough which is a seaport town shall (twenty-four hours before the day appointed for the holding of an Election) cause a polling booth to be opened, at which seamen who are under contract to proceed to sea in accordance with the Merchant Shipping Act, on a voyage of not less than four days, shall be able to record their votes by ballot, said, that the reasonableness and simplicity of the clause were so apparent, that he hoped the right hon. Gentleman would have no difficulty in accepting it; for no one could doubt that some special exception ought to be made in favour of the seamen on board vessels in ports on the North-east Coast of England, seeing that they might have to go to sea on the eve of an election. He, therefore, begged to move the clause of which he had given Notice.

MR. COLLINS

said, he was surprised that the hon. Member should waste the time of the Committee by proposing such a clause, after he had voted against the clause proposed by the hon. Member for Liverpool (Mr. Graves) a fortnight ago. He supposed that the hon. Member had in the meantime received communications from his constituents in reference to the blunder he had then made, and that he was now seeking to rectify his mistake. He trusted that the Committee would not permit the hon. Member to condone his offence, and that they would reject his clause.

MR. RATHBONE

said, he quite agreed with the hon. Member who had just sat down that the Motion under notice was simply wasting the time of the Committee. His hon. Colleague was a most fair man, and had he thought it possible to reconcile his proposal with the principle of the Bill, he would have brought forward a practical, instead of a general, clause on the subject.

MR. W. E. FORSTER

said, that the clause of the hon. Member, if adopted, would furnish a most inconvenient precedent, for if seamen were permitted to vote the day before they left port, there was no reason why those who arrived the day after the election should not be permitted to vote also.

MR. LIDDELL

said, in reference to the allusion to the hon. Member for Liverpool (Mr. Graves), in justice it ought to be stated that, in giving his reasons for offering a proposal of a general nature to the Committee, he had left it to the Government to devise the machinery for carrying it into effect if they adopted its principle.

MR. GOURLEY

said, he was not so much in the habit of wasting the time of the House as the hon. Member for Boston (Mr. Collins) represented; and if hon. Members on the Opposition side had done as little in the way of wasting the time of the House as he had done the Ballot Bill would have been passed into law long ago. With the permission of the Committee, however, he would not press the clause.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

MR. GREGORY

, in moving a new clause, providing that every voter for a county, or division of a county, who shall have no place of residence therein, and who shall reside at a distance of ten miles or upwards from the boundary of such county, or division of such county, shall have the right of obtaining a ballot paper from the Returning Officer, and of voting by signing the same in the presence of a Justice of the Peace, or Commissioner for taking oaths in Chancery, and transmitting the ballot paper, so signed and attested, to the Re-turning Officer, through the Post Office, said, he thought it was generally admitted that the out-voter was not a man liable to intimidation or extraneous influences, but that he was, generally speaking, an independent man, who would act for himself. Very often, however, out-voters were poor men who could not afford to pay the expenses of travelling from a distance to the place of poll, and as a clause proposed in the Corrupt Practices Bill would render the payment of such expenses illegal some machinery became requisite for enabling them to record their votes. It might, however, be said that out-voters were objectionable and that they ought to be got rid of; but facts must be taken as they existed, and it would be very hard that a man who discharged the duty of a good landlord and performed all his obligations to his poor dependents should be disfranchised because he followed an occupation which compelled him to reside at a distance from his property. It was, therefore, to throw facilities in the way of the out-voter to enable him to record his vote that he proposed the present clause, the machinery of which was simple and easy, and the principle of which he thought had been admitted when the Committee decided that a voter might display his vote.

New Clause (Voting papers for out-voters in counties,)—(Mr. Gregory,)—brought up, and read the first time.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Clause be read a second time."

MR. W. E. FORSTER

said, he could not in any shape accept the clause, for it was the same in principle that had been rejected by the Committee upon the vote upon the Motion of the hon. Member for York (Mr. J. Lowther). He must further say that he could not admit that the Committee had decided that a voter might display his vote. What the Committee had decided was to refuse to attach a certain specified punishment to the display of a voting paper; but they had also resolved that the paper should be so folded up that its contents were concealed. The hon. Member's proposal, moreover, would introduce a new principle—namely, that out-voters should be relieved from the personal tender of their votes. Now, he would not argue whether it was desirable ever to have out-voters in counties or to retain them; but being there, he objected to conferring upon them any such exceptional privilege as freeing them from the obligation of personal attendance.

LORD JOHN MANNERS

said, he must remind the Committee that unless some provision of the kind were adopted many of the out-voters, who were comparatively poor and could not bear the expense of going some distance to the poll, would virtually be disfranchised. At present candidates were permitted to pay their travelling expenses; but under the Bill it could not be ascertained how votes were given, and electors could not, therefore, appeal to a candidate for their expenses. The Bill clearly ought not, by a side-wind, to disfranchise these voters.

MR. W. E. FORSTER

said, he must deny that out-voters had any vested right to the payment of travelling expenses; what the law did at present was simply to permit such payments. The noble Lord's remarks, however, were a proof that, under the Ballot, the temptation to bribe would disappear, for he had admitted that candidates would no longer have any inducement to pay voters' travelling expenses.

LORD JOHN MANNERS

said, he questioned the inference to be drawn from the right hon. Gentleman's observations that the payment of the expenses was bribery.

MR. SCOURFIELD

said, he would offer a suggestion to the right hon. Gentleman, which was that the Amendment gave him an ample opportunity of imposing fresh penal clauses—not a beggarly period of two or three years, but capital punishment at least, for any violation of the principle of the clause.

MR. J. LOWTHER

said, he would recommend the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Gregory), in the event of his proposal being adopted by the Committee, to modify it in accordance with the suggestion offered by the hon. Member for Carlow (Mr. Bruen) last year. These votes would then be recorded secretly in the presence of a magistrate, who would forward them to the Returning Officer, the latter being responsible for their production at the poll.

MR. BRUEN

said, that one of the grounds of opposition to the clause he had put on the Paper last year was, that it involved the introduction of non-personal voting. He had, however, not been able to discover why the personal tender of a vote was a matter of such importance, as there could be no possible danger in sending the ballot-paper through the post-office. If they gave the poor voter facilities for voting, they would be doing injustice if they did not also give facilities to the out-voters. An Amendment like the present would work a great saving in the cost of county elections, and the objections which applied to it in connection with vivâ voce elections would not apply to secret voting.

MR. GREGORY

said, that if the principle of the clause met with the approval of the Committee, he should have no objection to insert words such as had been suggested by his hon. Friend the Member for York, which he believed would tend to improve it.

Question put.

The Committee divided:—Ayes 145; Noes 226: Majority 81.

MR. RAIKES

, in rising to move the following new clause:— This Act shall remain in force throughout the next General Election, and during the continuance of the Parliament to be then elected, but shall expire at the dissolution of that Parliament, said, he would remind the right hon. Gentleman of the circumstance he (Mr. Raikes) stated last year with reference to his own constituency at the last General Election in the borough he had the honour to represent. The contest, in one sense, was not a close one, the candidates returned being more than 1,000 a-head of their opponents; but there was a close race who should occupy the first place on the poll—so close, that at the end of the poll both committees believed their man had come in first. At the declaration he was assured that he stood first on the poll; but the Returning Officer, a few minutes afterwards, announced the numbers, giving the majority to Earl Grosvenor of 72. If such uncertainty could prevail now, what would it be when, under the Ballot, the poll remained unknown throughout the whole day? And when a candidate was returned by only a small majority, especially when it was known that some votes which might have turned the election had been declared invalid by the Returning Officer, he could not believe that constituencies would be satisfied with the result. A not unnatural feeling of jealousy and suspicion must prevail, especially among the humbler classes, when they saw their interests confided to one who was so entirely irresponsible to them as the Returning Officer. He mentioned a circumstance that occurred only the other day to show how difficult it might be to vote at an election by ballot. At a recent school board election a very distinguished Member of the House of Peers had been obliged to refer his ballotting paper to a Cabinet Minister before he could satisfy himself that he had filled it up correctly. He trusted the House would believe him when he said that he did not propose the clause in antagonism to the Bill, but because he believed that almost as soon as the Ballot had become law, it would also become unpopular throughout the country. Hon. Members of the House, however, who had been elected by ballot would hardly be antagonistic to that system; and that would strongly apply to the Minister of the day who had had a majority for himself returned under the Ballot. He, of course, would not wish to disturb such an arrangement. The consequence of this state of things would probably be that there would be a dead-lock, the country pulling one way and the House of Commons the other. Even if the Minister of the day should be induced to introduce some measure for altering or remedying the system of the Ballot he would still have the best reason for not wishing to see it carried, and, therefore, probably in one way or other a decision upon the question would be postponed. He asked the Committee not to refuse to give the one hope of a better future for which he asked. Let them, if they liked, pass the Bill in its present shape, and let them even make it more stringent; but let them render obligatory the consideration of the question on a Parliament that would otherwise have every inducement to evade it, so that there might be some chance that we should see daylight before very long, and, it might be, of returning to that open public life which was so essential to English liberty.

New Clause (Duration of Act,)—(Mr. Raikes,)—brought up, and read the first time.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Clause be read a second time."

MR. W. E. FORSTER

said, he would point out that the speech of the hon. Gentleman was such as might be most properly made on the second reading of the Bill. He would also observe that he did not believe the experience of the Ballot in England would be different from that of all other English-speaking nations where the system was in operation, and where no desire was exhibited that it should be done away with. But, supposing that were not the case, and that at the next General Election Members were elected who were opposed to the Ballot, the hon. Gentleman's object would then clearly be gained without the necessity of any legislation on the subject. There was one point, however, in the speech of the hon. Gentleman with which he perfectly coincided, and that was where he said he believed that the majority of the next Parliament would be in favour of this measure. It appeared to him that they would be acting unjustly towards a future Parliament if they acted in such a manner as would force upon it the consideration again of this question, especially when they must know that if such Parliament should object to the Ballot, it would, of course, be in its power to act for itself in the matter.

MR. BROMLEY-DAVENPORT

said, he did not think the right hon. Gentleman was quite right in assuming that the Ballot gave satisfaction in every country where it had been tried. He had recently been speaking to an American gentleman of position, who said to him—"You are going too fast, and trying to follow us too closely. You have not, however, got the Ballot yet. When you get it, God help you!"

Question put.

The Committee divided:—Ayes 137; Noes 215: Majority 78.