HC Deb 16 May 1877 vol 234 cc1030-8

Order for Second Reading read.

SIR COLMAN O'LOGHLEN,

in moving that the Bill be now read the second time, said its object was, as stated in the Preamble, to provide that the election of Poor Law Guardians in Ireland, who were now elected by voting papers, should for the future be elected by Ballot. He confessed that he could not understand why this principle should not be adopted. Members of Parliament, members of municipal corporations, and members of school beards were elected by Ballot, and he could not see any reason why Poor Law Guardians should not be elected in the same way. He might be told that if the Guardians were elected by Ballot, persons having property who were not present could not vote, as they now could by voting papers; but the House must remember that property was represented on Boards of Guardians by a certain number of ex-officio Guardians on the Board, and the Bill did not propose to interfere in any way with them. He had received letters from all parts of Ireland, approving of the principle of his measure, and saying that under the present system intimidation to a vast extent was still carried on in many districts; that a large quantity of voting papers were signed under compulsion, and that if the Boards of Guardians were to represent the ratepayers the same privileges must be given to persons voting for their election that were given to those who voted at other elections—namely, the privilege of the Ballot. Since the Bill had been printed he had also received a number of letters from various towns in England approving of the principle of his measure, and saying that the principle ought to be adopted in England. It was then too late to propose and introduce a Bill for England; but he need not say that if the principle was adopted in Ireland, it must also be adopted in England, and he would give all the support in his power to anyone who would bring in a similar Bill for England. The Bill provided that the Local Government Board of Ireland should issue a sealed Order, regulating the manner in which the election of the Guardians should be carried out by Ballot. The object of this was to prevent a large quantity of details being put in the Bill, which would have been necessary if he had proposed a plan of electing Poor Law Guardians in Ireland. He gave the power to the Local Government Board, and in doing so he had only followed the plan adopted in England when school-beard members were to be elected, which gave the same power to the Privy Council in England. The Bill also provided that school-rooms, police barracks, and court-houses should be used for the purposes of elections free of charge. The object of this provision was to save as much expense as possible, in order to meet the argument which had been raised—that if the plan proposed in the Bill was adopted the elections of Poor Law Guardians in Ireland would become more expensive than they were at present. The other two clauses of the .Bill simply related to matters of detail, which he need not now go into. He only asked the House to affirm by the second reading the principle of the Bill. He hoped the Bill would not be talked out, because the people of Ireland were anxious that a division should be taken upon it.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."—(Sir Colman O' Loghlen.)

MR. S. MOORE,

in moving, that the Bill be read a second time that day six months, said, he could not quite believe that intimidation existed to anything near the extent stated by the right hon. and learned Member for Clare (Sir Colman O'Loghlen). His great objection to the Bill was on the grounds of the expenses it would entail, because it was clear that if the measure was passed, a very expensive machinery would be necessary for the election of Poor Law Guardians in Ireland. If in every place where Guardians were elected, schoolhouses or police barracks were required it would be most expensive. In fact, the same machinery would be required for the election of Poor Law Guardians, who were only elected for one year, as was required for the election of a Member of Parliament. Agents and clerks would be required at every place, and if there were several candidates closely contesting, the expense would be simply enormous. He did not think that the country would care to bear all the expense which would be imposed by the Bill, and he did not believe that the right hon. and learned Gentleman would like to put it on the Guardians themselves. There was, further, in his opinion no necessity for changing the present system, and for the various reasons he had stated, he would move the rejection of the Bill.

Amendment proposed, to leave out the word "now," and at the end of the Question to add the words "upon this day six months."—(Mr. Stephen Moore.)

MR. M'CARTHY DOWNING

said, he believed the change proposed by the Bill to have Poor Law Guardians elected by Ballot to be absolutely necessary. He had had some experience in the matter, and he was exceedingly surprised to hear the hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. S. Moore) say that he was not aware that intimidation had been practised at the election of Poor Law Guardians in Ireland. He (Mr. M'Carthy Downing) knew of his own knowledge of voting papers being sent to certain tenants on certain properties, and no sooner were they delivered by the police than they were taken up by the landlord, who took them to his own house, and then the tenants had to vote as he wished. That was a case which came under his knowledge, and he undertook to prove it. In another case the same thing occurred; while in other cases voting papers were altered. He remembered when the Ballot Bill was passing through that House he took upon himself to put down some Amendments to that Bill. One of his Amendments was that the Bill should apply to the election of Town Commissioners, so that the voting for members of those Bodies should be by Ballot. He also put down an Amendment upon the Paper to the effect that the voting for the election of Poor Law Guardians should be by Ballot. The result, however, was that he was told if he pressed both his Amendments, both might be lost, and upon a recommendation being made to him he did not press the latter Amendment. He wanted to know how the Attorney General for Ireland could possibly object to the present Bill. Why should not the same protection be given in Ireland to the persons who voted for the election of Boards of Guardians as was given to persons who voted for the election of Town Commissioners? The House knew pretty well the coercion which now existed, that it was very great, and in many respects equal to what was used in elections for certain boroughs or counties. There was the landlord on the one hand, and the priest on the other. The landlord came to the tenant and said—" Vote for so-and-so; "and the clergyman, on the other hand, came and said—"Do not be intimidated; vote for the best man; vote as you please." He knew of nothing which had caused so much disunion in Ireland as the present system of electing Poor Law Guardians. Under the present system the landlord had six votes as occupier of the land, and six votes as owner in fee, making in all 12 votes. Independent of this, the landlords tried to coerce their tenants; and he had no hesitation in saying that, in his opinion, it was most unjust that the same protection was not given to those who voted for the election of Poor Law Guardians which was given to those who voted for the election of Members of Parliament. As to the expense, it would be much less under the Bill than it was at present, and so insignificant as not to be considered.

MR. BRUEN

said, he could not support the measure before the House. His experience—which he believed to be that of most Irishmen—of the election in Ireland of Poor Law Guardians did not run in the same line as that of the hon. Member who had just spoken, and who had over-stated the matter. He believed that in the greater part of the country there was an absence of intimidation in connection with such contests. He thought his hon. Friend ought to have given the name of the gentleman to whom he referred as having been intimidated. The election of Poor Law Guardians was not at all the same as that for Members of Parliament, and he submitted that logically there was no necessity for the Ballot, the system of voting papers being, as he thought, not open to much abuse. The Bill would render a very expensive machinery necessary, and it would not be easy to get a sufficient number of returning officers and polling places. In short, the present system was much more convenient.

CAPTAIN NOLAN

said, that in the speeches made by the hon. Members who opposed the measure, he fancied he heard the speeches which were made on the Ballot Bill in 1872. Many Conservative Members then took the same objection to the Ballot Bill, and said the machinery was expensive and cumbersome, and was not required. He was not surprised that the same arguments should be trotted out again, because this was practically the same question—namely, whether the landlord should be allowed to use his influence, or the voter should be allowed to vote as he liked. He was quite certain there would be no expense attendant upon the adoption of the Ballot at elections in Poor Law Unions. In the majority of cases with which he was acquainted, the Ballot would take place at ordinary polling stations. The expense of additional stations would be very small, as the existing Ballot Act required that there should be a Ballot station within four miles of every voter, except in mountains or thinly-populated districts. In every Poor Law Union there were at least 30 or 40 officials who could manage the election without charge to the Poor Law Board. He thought that if Irish voters grudged to walk one or two miles to record their votes, they did not deserve to have votes. Such an objection was hardly one that an opponent of the Bill should take, unless he wanted to fall back upon an attack on the machinery of the Bill instead of its principles. He thought the case was rather stronger for the Bill than it was I for the existing Ballot Act, as the system proposed was much simpler than the existing one, under which the voting papers sometimes miscarried, or were tampered with. Territorial influence must be stronger in proportion as the area in which it was exercised was circumscribed. A candidate putting up for election for the Board of Guardians would be well known to landlord and agent, whilst a candidate to represent the county in Parliament would probably not be so well known; and, moreover, a Parliamentary Election only occurred every four or five years. Consequently, the Ballot was absolutely more necessary in elections for Boards of Guardians than in Parliamentary Elections. A case which had recently come before the Clifden Union, in the county Galway, showed the necessity for the Ballot. This was a case in which the Union had to decide whether a child should be educated in the Catholic or the Protestant religion. When the Poor Law Board had to decide upon such a case as that, it was very important that the elections should be perfectly free from all suspicion or doubt.

MR. W. BEACH

thought the present mode of electing Guardians was very satisfactory, and that there was no necessity for making any change.

MR. HIBBERT

said, he did not feel competent to speak as to the mode in which elections were carried on in Ireland; but he knew that there was in England a strong feeling in favour of improving the present system of electing Poor Law Guardians, and that must be his excuse for saying a few words on an Irish Bill. Nay, he would go further, and say that gross abuses prevailed in England in connection with these elections. If that were so in England, he had no doubt the same might be accepted as being the case in Ireland. He did not think the system expensive, as there were few contests; but in any case he thought there ought to be, and hoped the Government would grant, an inquiry by a Committee of the House into Poor Law Elections in England, Ireland, and probably in Scotland.

SIR MICHAEL HICKS - BEACH

said, that if he could have supposed that there was any probability of this question being brought under the notice of the House on that occasion, he would have armed himself with statistics on the subject, which would sufficiently establish not only the statement of the hon. Member for Oldham (Mr. Hibbert) as to the comparative unfrequency of contests, but which he thought would satisfactorily have shown how very rarely in these contests such scenes occurred as those which had been described. They were not unfrequently asked by hon. Members for Ireland to assimilate the law to that of England. He wished to call the attention of the House to the fact that in this matter they were asked to go in another direction, and to make a change in regard to the law of electing Poor Law Guardians in Ireland which had not been seriously proposed by anyone for England. It must not be forgotten that the law regulating the election of Guardians was practically identical in both countries, and no change should be made unless the House was satisfied that the whole Poor Law system should be changed, or that there were circumstances in Ireland calling for a change which did not exist in England. He should be disposed to dispute both propositions. He did not see that there was any necessity for a change in the Poor Law in both countries, and he was by no means satisfied that there was anything in the circumstances of Ireland which would justify the adoption of a different system in that country to that prevailing in England. The hon. and gallant Member for Galway (Captain Nolan) told the House that they had under their consideration precisely the same question as Parliament had already dealt with in Parliamentary and municipal elections. But the Ballot had been introduced into Parliamentary and municipal elections mainly because it was alleged, not merely by Members of the House, but before a Select Committee that bribery, intimidation, and other corrupt practices largely prevailed in those elections. They had no such proof whatever in regard to Poor Law elections in Ireland or England. It should also be remembered that there were special advantages in the present system of election of Poor Law Guardians in the two countries, which certainly ought not to be overlooked by those who paid attention to the question. To begin with, the system was undoubtedly a cheap one. Whatever arrangements might be made, such as those suggested in the Bill, for utilizing school-houses, any adoption of the Ballot would materially increase the cost of elections. The present system elicited the whole of the votes, which no system of balloting was likely to do. In comparatively few cases was there any political or religious issue at stake as in Parliamentary or municipal elections. In Poor Law elections the real question generally was the proper and impartial administration of the Poor Law. There was no doubt that the present system of the voting papers being left at the houses of voters, and being called for by the proper officers, did afford to the voter a means of recording his vote with less trouble than any other. It was said that the system was abused, or at any rate that it was liable to abuse. He admitted that cases had been known in England and Ireland, where the system had been abused. In Ireland there were nearly 3,500 separate electoral divisions, and considering that there was a fresh election every year, it was wonderful how few contests took place in which the returns were disputed and eventually set aside by the Poor Law Board. The Mover of the Bill had not touched upon the plural voting for Poor Law Guardians, which rendered that machinery necessarily different from that of Parliamentary or municipal elections. He left all questions of this kind in the hands of the Local Government Board, who would have no little trouble in dealing with that matter, and would be certain to receive censure from a great many quarters in whatever way they attempted to settle it. The hon. Member for Oldham (Mr. Hibbert) said he approved of the principle of the Bill sufficiently to enable him to support the second reading. In saying that, the hon. Member had guarded himself to a certain extent by admitting that an inquiry into the subject ought first be in- stituted. He (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach) spoke for himself alone, and without committing his Colleagues, but his own individual feeling was that he should be extremely glad to see such an inquiry. If malpractices existed, he should like facts to be laid before the House and the country to show that they prevailed to such an extent as had been described. He was not convinced that there was any necessity for a change, and he thought there would be great difficulty in finding adequate machinery for the purpose. Under these circumstances, he was unable to support the second reading of the Bill.

MR. PLUNRET

said, that no case on which to found a change in the present system of election had been made either by a Commission, a Select Committee, or by any other official inquiry. It was shown that wherever there was a contest for the election of a Poor Law Guardian the election under the proposed system would be attended with a considerable increase of expense.

Question put, "That the word now stand part of the Question."

The House divided:—Ayes 109; Noes 174: Majority 65.—(Div. List, No. 131.)

Words added.

Main Question, as amended, put, and agreed to.

Second Reading put offs for six months.