SECOND READING. (Hansard, 13 July 1868)

§ LORD ABINGER
said, that he had just presented to their Lordships no less that ninety-eight Petitions in its favour. These were chiefly from officers of the Customs, Revenue, and Postal Services in all parts of the country. To one Petition from the General Post Office 1,200 signatures were attached; and the Petitions from the London districts and from the Post Office employés of Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Glasgow, Leeds, and Bristol, gave a total of 3,189 signatures. There were also Petitions from the Mayor and Corporation of Wexford; the Provost, Magistrates, and Councillors of Leith; the Town Commissioners of Galway; the Inhabitants of Brechin and of Lichfield; and the Town Council of Nairn. It seldom happened that so small a Bill involved the interests of so large a number of persons. The Bill consisted of only one clause; but 1079 the number of persons the Bill affected was 36,000–26,000 in the Post Office, 5,500 in the Customs, and 5,000 in the Inland Revenue; and these public servants felt, after the large amount of enfranchisement conferred by the last Reform Bill, that a stigma would be cast upon them if they were classed with the residuum and the few respectable people who were out of the pale of the franchise. In 1782, when the disability was imposed, it was a wise and judicious measure, and it was passed with the approval of the public and of the Services because the Government unscrupulously used its influence with the officers of the different Departments. A great change occurred in 1832; and now the electoral roll had been so much enlarged that the votes of revenue officers, even if they were at the disposal of Government, could not have any appreciable influence on the elections. The admission of a large number of respectable persons to the list of voters would nevertheless strengthen the hands of almost any Administration. The Commissioners of Customs had drawn up a document in reference to this question, in which they adduced what he regarded as very illogical reasons against allowing revenue officers to vote. They alleged that to do so would be to introduce political agitation in a Department which was now free from it. Now, it had also been asserted in the House of Commons that the revenue officers themselves felt no anxiety on the subject; and, in support of that assertion, reference had been made to the fact that only a comparatively small number of Petitions had been presented in favour of the Bill, but a full and sufficient answer had been given to that allegation. An enormous number of Petitions had been presented to their Lordships' House in favour of the measure. He himself had presented no fewer than 130 from various parts of the country. If the Bill were not passed there would be a constant repetition of these demands. Again, it was alleged in the Minute of the Commissioners of Customs that great inconvenience would result to the public service from the leave of absence which would have to be given to the revenue officers in order to enable them to attend at elections. Having regard to the fact that elections were not very frequent occurrences, he did not think he need go into any argument in refutation of that statement. It was said, further, that if revenue officers had votes this circumstance 1080 might lead to political combinations on their part in order to obtain an increase of salary; but he could not at all agree to that assumption. In the House of Commons there was a large number of military officers, and there was a good sprinkling of them in their Lordships' House also; but he had yet to learn that in either House those gallant officers had agitated for an increase of pay to themselves or the soldiers under their command. It was true that there had been an increase in the pay of the soldiers, but that increase was an effect of the law of supply and demand. The Board of Excise objected to the Bill, but their Report was still weaker in its arguments and less deserving of attention than the Report from the Customs. It urged that the possession of the franchise would inconvenience the officers themselves, and render them liable to be placed in unpleasant positions; but that argument did not go for much when it was found that they desired the franchise. And their Lordships would bear in mind that the Bill was supported by the heads of the Departments. Fifteen out of the seventeen heads of the Excise Department were in favour of its passing. The Bill was not one creating a right, but one removing disabilities which had been imposed upon a portion of Her Majesty's subjects. It did not touch those Acts which prohibited public servants from unduly influencing others in the exercise of the franchise.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR
I venture to ask your Lordships' very anxious consideration for a few minutes, both to the principle of this Bill and to the position in which the measure now stands. My Lords, the noble Lord who moved the second reading said no more than what was accurate when he said that this Bill was one of extreme importance. It is of extreme importance, on the one hand, because it involves the political franchise of a large number of our fellow-subjects. It is important, on the other hand, because it is supposed by authorities whose opinion deserves the greatest consideration that this measure, if passed into law, would affect the collection of the public Revenue. I freely admit the proposition of the noble Lord who moved the second reading (Lord Abinger) that the burden entirely lies on those who oppose the admission to the 1081 franchise of the class of whom he has spoken to establish some reason why the franchise should be refused to these persons. At first sight they have got every qualification which, I think, should incline us to extend the franchise to them. They are selected, in the first instance, by a process which, at one time, found considerable favour as the basis of the franchise,—namely, the process of competitive examination. With regard to their continuance in the public service and to their promotion, it is not too much to say that both depend on their intelligence and good conduct. In addition to that they are generally persons of whom we may truly say they represent the heads of families. They of all others are interested in the well-being of the country, because on the well-being of the country the hope of their livelihood and the hope of their promotion must depend. Further than that, the noble Lord is entitled to this admission, that there is certainly in this country no general rule applicable to the Civil Service disqualifying the members of it from the exercise of the franchise. You at present entrust the franchise to that large class of civil servants who are under the control of the Treasury, who are connected with the Departments of the Secretaries of State, who are under the superintendence of the Admiralty and of the War Department; and the only three Departments the servants of which are now deprived of the franchise are the Post Office, the Customs, and the Inland Revenue. There is especially a very large class of persons in the employment of one of the Departments to which I have referred who are at present in possession of the franchise—I mean the numerous body who are engaged in the Royal Dockyards. Let me remind your Lordships—for the history of this question must be kept in view—of the course which Parliament took in regard to the persons employed in the dockyards. The Reform Bill introduced in 1859 contained, for the first time, I think, a clause proposing to withhold the franchise from the workmen in the dockyards. That Bill did not become law; but in 1866, when another measure of Reform was brought in by the late Government, a similar clause was inserted withholding the franchise from the dockyard workmen. In the last Session, when the Bill which has now become law was introduced into Parliament, the Government of the day recommended it as a very large measure of enfranchisement, and as 1082 one the peculiar characteristic of which would be that it would not in any way be a disfranchising Bill; and they accordingly abstained from making the proposition that had been made on former occasions for disfranchising the dockyard workmen. Now, the Acts of Parliament which disabled the civil servants of the Post Office, the Inland Revenue, and the Customs from voting were passed, the one of them in the last century and the other two in the beginning of the present century. According to their Preambles the ground of those measures was, as the noble Lord has stated, a desire on the part of the Legislature to keep in check and to control the power of the Crown, which it was then supposed might be exercised in a manner dangerous to the freedom of election by the opportunity which the Crown had of placing in, those three great branches of the public service persons who, if entitled to the franchise, might be disposed to use it in favour of the Government of the day by whom they had been promoted. The circumstances of the present time are in two respects extremely different. In the first place, the constitution of Parliament has been very materially altered, first by the Act of 1832, and then by laws which have since then been passed. Moreover, there has been introduced into those three branches of the service a system altogether unknown at the period when the earlier Acts were passed, and which has made an important modification in those Departments. I refer to the reform in the Inland Revenue and the Customs, according to which no appointments, except first appointments, are made by the Executive Government; and even the first appointments can hardly be said to proceed from the Executive Government, which, in substance, only nominates a limited number of candidates, who compete together by examination. Therefore, in those Departments the reason for the older legislation has disappeared. But, on, the other hand, it must be observed that the permanent heads of the Customs and Inland Revenue at all times in recent years, when the proposition has been made to confer the franchise on the servants in their employment, testified the most decided repugnance to any legislation in that direction. Your Lordships will, I think, agree with what has been stated by every Government which in modern days has held Office in this country—namely, the great confidence which 1083 the country has in those gentlemen who are the permanent heads of those Departments; the great reliance which is placed in their ability, their experience, and their entire devotion to the public service; and any opinion which falls from them must be entitled to the greatest weight both with your Lordships and the other House of Parliament. Now, when the Reform Bill of last year was passing through the House of Commons a proposition was there made to insert a clause having the effect of the present measure. That clause was opposed by my right hon. Friend (Mr. Disraeli) on the ground to which I have referred—namely, that the permanent heads of the Customs and Inland Revenue really entertained a strong opinion that, however it might have originally happened that the franchise was refused to the Civil Service, in its operation the exclusion had been found so beneficial that it ought to be maintained, and that injury would accrue to the service if the exclusion were terminated. The same view was taken by the immediate predecessor of my right hon. Friend, Mr. Gladstone, who also opposed the clause, and on the same ground; and the result was that it was not pressed to a division. Since the Bill now before your Lordships was introduced into the other House, two Reports, made by the permanent heads of the Customs and Inland Revenue, were communicated to Parliament, and are now before your Lordships. Those Reports express a very strong disapproval of a measure for enfranchising the members of those branches of the Civil Service. Those Reports having been made, Her Majesty's Government in the House of Commons felt it their duty to place them and the substance of them in the strongest way before the other House of Parliament, and the Government were of opinion—whatever might otherwise have been their disposition to enlarge as much as they safely could do the basis of the franchise—that it was their duty, as representing in the House of Commons those who, as permanent heads of Departments, could not be heard there, not only to state their reasons, but to support them by their votes in that House. Consequently, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to whose Department the matter more properly belonged, urged with the utmost force he could use the reasons given by the permanent heads of the Customs and Inland Revenue against the measure. My 1084 right hon. Friend was supported in that view by Mr. Gladstone, who was himself so long Chancellor of the Exchequer, although I rather think that Gentleman did not record his vote on the subject. The question thus raised was certainly one peculiarly for the House of Commons, because the view taken by the heads of those Departments was that the consequence of this measure of enfranchisement might be dangerous to the collection of the public Revenue. The Government thought that was a question which the House of Commons, as the guardians of the public Revenue, must take upon themselves to decide. The result of the discussion and division in the other House was that the Bill was carried by a considerable majority. No doubt the House in which that division occurred was not a large one at the time; but it has been said, I believe, with some accuracy, that that was much owing to the circumstance that, the Chancellor and the ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer taking the view they did, many Members who would have been anxious to support the Bill felt constrained to absent themselves from the division. After this decision, over-ruling the strongly-expressed opinions of the permanent heads of those Departments, the Government have been obliged to consider the course which they would recommend your Lordships to adopt. They might have asked your Lordships to reject this Bill; and if they were of opinion that the reasons given by the permanent heads of those Departments were reasons which upon examination ought to receive the degree of weight which those gentlemen themselves attach to them, the Government would not hesitate to ask your Lordships to reject the measure, though such a step might seem a strong one to those who desire to see it pass into law. I think, however, it will be found that it will be your Lordships' opinion, as it is that of Her Majesty's Government, that those reasons, although I agree that they are very strongly and broadly expressed, are not strong enough, after the decision arrived at in the other House of Parliament, to lead you to throw out the Bill. Any objection I may make I shall offer with the most profound respect for the heads of the Departments, who are, I am sure, actuated by the highest and purest motives. In substance the reasons of the Commissioners of Customs may be very shortly stated; but before I state them I will mention the num- 1085 bers of the different Departments who are affected by this proposal. We have no reasons from the Post Office; and those which we have are from the Customs and Inland Revenue. The total number of persons in the three Departments of the Civil Service is upwards of 36,216. Of these there are in the Post Office 25,652; in the Customs, 5,115; and Inland Revenue, 5,049. The reasons stated on the part of the Customs authorities are four. The first reason is that if the persons employed in this Department are to be allowed to vote it will be necessary to give them leave of absence, and this would cause inconvenience to the Service. I do not think this ought to influence your Lordships much. An election, after all, rarely occurs, and as these persons will all be occupation voters the polling places will be near their residences. We know that in some of the largest establishments in the country, where the men enjoy the franchise, means are found to enable them to go to the polling-booths in the dinner hour, and there is not the slightest practical difficulty in the way of their obtaining the limited amount of time necessary to enable them to record their votes. The Commissioners next state that the possession of the franchise might affect the promotion of inferior officers by their superiors, but as I understand the matter this difficulty could not arise. The superior officers have not the right of promotion. They may recommend officers for promotion, but it is the Board themselves who alone possess the power of promotion. The third reason is that it might subject the officers to solicitations for their votes which might place them in equivocal and difficult positions. I am at a loss to perceive the force of this objection. The fourth and last reason is the gravest one, if it has any foundation—that these persons might form combinations to secure for themselves an increase of salary. This might be very well in theory, but there is not much weight in this suggestion. How far would your Lordships carry out this principle? It is scarcely possible, looking at the composition of the other House of Parliament, and the vast body of electors, to say that any such consideration as this should lead to the disfranchisement of any class of Her Majesty's subjects. It might be said that members of the military and naval services might combine to raise the pay of those services, but that is no reason for refusing them a vote. 1086 By interests which are very strong in the Commons great combinations might be formed for the benefit of those interests, and yet you do not disfranchise any body of men on this account. The railway interest is very influential; the publicans are a very influential body; so, also, are the solicitors, who have combined to get the certificate duty removed. I might suggest half a score instances of that kind, but you do not lay down the position that because combinations might be formed that would be a reason for disfranchising those interests. The Inland Revenue Department have stated their reasons against the Bill, and they are two in number. These are expressed with so much point in their Report that I will read them to your Lordships; but before I do so I will advert to an opinion they give which goes a long way towards bringing us to the conclusion that we may safely support this Bill. They state that— It is generally supposed that the principal, if not the only, reason for maintaining the existing law is a dread of the influence of the Government of the day being brought to bear upon a large body of voters who hold their offices during pleasure. This, the Commissioners state, they regard as a consideration of minor importance. We thus get rid of that apprehension which was the foundation of the legislation which we are now asked to repeal. Their objections apply to the out-door officers. They take an imaginary case of an officer of excise canvassing for A. B., while C. D., the opposing candidate—or even one of C. D.' s most prominent supporters—is a distiller or maltster. They say— If an excise officer so situated should find it his duty about the time of the election to procure a search warrant to ransack C. D.' s house, or to put his distillery under seizure, and bring an information against him for penalties, no one can doubt that he would subject himself to the greatest suspicion of using the power conferred on him as a revenue officer to serve a political party, and the mischief of such an imputation would be nearly the same whether it were true or false. I have read this because it states in forcible language an objection felt by the Commissioners, to which the fullest consideration should be given. But the possibility or impossibility of the officer giving a vote has nothing to do with this objection, which takes it for granted that the excise officer has got strong political opinions of his own, and that there is a danger of his carrying out those opinions in such a way as to allow it to shape his 1087 course in the collection of the Revenue. But he can do that quite as well if he has not a vote as if he has. I go further than that and say that there is an additional reason for using his power in an illegitimate manner if you deny him the proper outlet, and refuse him what everyone else has—the opportunity of recording the expression of his political opinion. If you give him a vote he has then nothing to complain of; but if there is one thing that would tempt a man of strong political opinions to act in a sinister and improper manner, it is to refuse him a vote. But the Commissioners do not tell us that such a case has ever occurred. If these officers possess the power of injuring other people even without votes, when they have strong political opinions of their own, they will be more likely to use this power in order to favour one side or the other when they are denied the franchise than when they are able to exercise it. The Commissioners go on to say— The power of removal is one of the most valuable parts of our disciplinary system. If an officer is believed to be on terms of too great intimacy with a trader under his survey—if he has fallen into the company of bad associates—if he appears to be deficient in the acuteness and energy requisite for dealing with some fraudulent trader—or if be has identified himself with any particular religious sect or parochial party, so as to be obnoxious to other sects and parties in the locality, his removal to another district is a ready and effectual check to the mischief which would otherwise ensue. But when the officer becomes a voter, when he is perhaps one of the managers for a political party in a small borough, what will not be our difficulty in sending him away, perhaps on the eve of an election, and what will not be the suspicions of party motives to which the Board and the superior officers who recommend his removal will be subjected? Now, that question deserved consideration and weight; but is it sufficient to justify the exclusion from the franchise of a class of persons otherwise well qualified for it? I think not, and for this reason—the Commissioners admit that, at present, if any one of their officers has become identified with some particular party in parochial or local politics, so as to prejudice the public service, they endeavour to cure the evil by removing him to another place. Now, I apprehend the same power would remain in their hands, and being a body wholly unconnected with the Government, against whom no suspicion has ever been suggested that they exercise their powers for any political purpose, public opinion would support them if they found it neces- 1088 sary to deal with any officer mixed up in general politics in the same way as they have done hitherto with regard to local politics. As to Members of Parliament being subjected to solicitation, I think the Commissioners have already taken steps to prevent such a thing, for when myself a Member of the other House, being ignorant of what the rule of the Service was, I wrote to them with reference to a person who I thought had been dealt hardly with, and I received in reply a printed form stating that by the rules of the Service no Member of Parliament was allowed to communicate with the Commissioners with regard to any person in their employment, and that if a Member so communicated they would not stop to inquire whether he had been put in motion by the civil servant, but would assume that the civil servant had put him in motion, and would punish the civil servant accordingly. That, I dare say, is a very proper rule, and it quite disposes of the objection as to interference with Members of Parliament. These, my Lords, are the reasons why Her Majesty's Government, having taken the opinion of the House of Commons—the guardians of the public Revenue—do not think they ought to ask your Lordships to interfere with the progress of this Bill. I trust and believe that on its becoming law the large number of persons whom it will admit to the franchise will show by the way in which they exercise it that they are worthy the confidence reposed in them by Parliament. The Bill proposes to deal with the Acts 22 Geo. III., c. 41, 43 Geo. III., c. 25. I will only add, for the consideration of the noble Lord in charge of the Bill, that the 9th section of the Act 7 & 8 Geo. IV., which it also proposes to repeal, not only prohibits civil servants from voting, but imposes a penalty on any member of the Civil Service who directly or indirectly persuades any other person to vote. Now, I think it would be well to retain that proviso and forbid these persons from becoming solicitors of votes, which might raise a suspicion that they were using the influence of their position for political ends. The general scope of the Bill does not require the repeal of that part of the section. With this reservation I cheerfully assent to the second reading.

§ EARL GRANVILLE
My Lords, your Lordships must be very grateful to the noble and learned Lord (the Lord Chancellor) for the agreeable and pleasing way 1089 in which he has explained the change of opinion on the part of Her Majesty's Government with regard to this question. I entirely agree with him as to the abstract claims of men of such position and character as these civil servants to the enjoyment of the franchise. The only question is whether in other ways such a measure would be injurious to the public service. I cannot help thinking that the course taken by the Government in the other House was rather hard upon the civil servants, for, after laying on the table the very decided reports of the permanent heads of Departments, the Chancellor of; the Exchequer, placing, as the noble and learned Lord tells us, his own opinion in abeyance in deference to those Reports, made one of the strongest speeches I ever remember reading against the claims of those gentlemen. I really think that some of the arguments which the noble and learned Lord has so forcibly advanced against the Reports, and with many of which I entirely agree, should have been weighed by the Members of the Government in the other House before they gave their opposition to the Bill. I came down to-night not feeling so strongly as many the objections to giving this class the franchise, but feeling that in a matter of such delicacy in connection with the public Revenue—a question in which the other House is not exclusively interested—I should give the benefit of any doubt which existed in my mind in favour of the opinion of three successive Chancellors of the Exchequer, who ought to be persons most competent to give an opinion on the matter. I now find that Her Majesty's Government, on further consideration, do not think harm will arise to the collection of Revenue from this Bill, and in the sanguine hope that the heads of Departments will prove mistaken, and with unmixed pleasure that so intelligent and respectable a class should be admitted to the franchise, I most cheerfully support the second reading.

§ EARL FORTESCUE
said, he objected to the retention of that part of the section referred to by the noble and learned Lord. He thought these officials should not be debarred from giving the reasons which influenced them. To retain the proviso would be a trap to catch the unwary, and would be a slur on a very deserving class.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR
explained that he had not suggested that civil servants should be debarred from giving 1090 reasons for their votes, but simply from soliciting the votes of other persons.

§ LORD ABINGER
said, that the object of repealing the entire section was to place excise officers, to whom alone it applied, in the same position as other services. That section made the penalty with regard to the excise £500, whereas with regard to other services it was only £100. The matter could be settled in Committee.