REPRESENTATION OF THE PEOPLE BILL.

HL Deb 18 December 1917 vol 27 cc226-60

Order of the Day read for resuming the adjourned debate on the Motion for the Second Reading.

THE EARL OF HALSBURY

My Lords, if I venture to avail myself of the courtesy of my noble friend Lord Chaplin, who moved the adjournment of the debate last night, it is not that I can add anything to what has already been said, but I believe that it is not an unimportant matter that the number of your Lordships who take part in the debate may be considered as evidence to show in what way the business of this country is conducted, and is an assurance to the country that whatever is done is done with clue deliberation and by a sufficient number of your Lordships. It is also an assurance that your Lordships are not passed by as persons who are of no account in the State, but that your counsel and advice are of considerable use. I ought to apologise to my friend Lord Chaplin, who is I think a senior legislator to me though scarcely senior in age, and I thank him very much for having afforded me the opportunity of saying what I have to say at once, without waiting until my turn came in the ordinary course.

Let me say that I am of opinion that this is a very bad Bill, and that in the ordinary course I should have moved that it be rejected. I think that it is a very bad Bill because it is brought in at a time when it does not admit of real consideration. To re-create a whole Constitution is a thing that you ought not to do in the middle of a great war. I suppose that no one would doubt such a proposition. If you bring in a new Constitution at such a time you are probably bringing into conflict every one of the great questions that have pervaded the political life of the last century, and you should not do that at a time when His Majesty's Ministers ought to be, and no doubt are, employed every day and every hour in the consideration of those things which must arise in war. It is wrong that at such a time you should have all these political questions brought together and decided without the consideration that they ought to have and would have received had they been brought forward at a more opportune time. A conflict of this sort, raising as I say every one of the questions which have occupied the country within the last century, ought not to have been risked at this time. I could run through a very considerable number of questions which hitherto have divided political parties, and I could show that each of those questions is raised in this Bill. But it would be idle for me to attempt to go through them all. I will take only one, female suffrage. We had a very good and very convincing speech from a noble Lord upon that last night.

I think that it would be a very inadequate statement of the difficulties which will arise if one were to confine oneself to the questions which are raised by the Bill itself. There are also the difficulties which will arise in connection with reconstruction. Consider all the questions which lie before us and with which this Constitution has to deal. I need not go through those questions in detail. If I did, I might go through almost the whole catalogue of human legislation, and find that almost all those questions must be raised in the next Parliamentary Assembly, whatever that Assembly may be. Consider the understanding—I do not say that it was a treaty; we had better not use that word—but consider how it was suggested that during the war, at all events, all these Party questions should be allowed to sleep. I do not think it was in the form of a treaty, but it was an understanding which I believe pervaded the House without any exception, and to a certain extent it has been reasonably kept.

And now we are countered by this Bill. I am not going through the Bill. I think it would be a waste of time to do it, because everybody who has attempted to read the Bill must know how all these questions stand. Take, for instance, the only question which has been dealt with at length—namely, female suffrage. What are we to say about that? We are to take this Bill, which comprehends, as I say, a great many other things, and, if we do not, what is to be the result? I do not speak now merely of the question whether or not, if this Bill were defeated, His Majesty's Government would resign. It may be that in present circumstances they would not follow that course, but it might be that they would, and then in what position would we be placed? It seems to me that nothing could be more unpatriotic—to use a phrase which has been too frequently used for smaller questions—but it certainly would be to the injury of the country, I think to the vast injury of the country, if it were supposed that the present advisers of His Majesty might be displaced from office by the deliberate determination of one Party in the State. It seems to me that that is a very serious responsibility placed upon us, and one which I, for one, would decline to accept.

I wish to speak with all respect of the framers of the Bill. I am not certain that they will take it as a compliment from me, but I believe that there has been a very sincere desire to please everybody, and this is a very dangerous frame of mind for people who are entrusted with the duty of making a Constitution. In the first place, you cannot please everybody; and, in the next place, the attempt to please everybody may introduce very dangerous principles into your Constitution. But the overwhelming consideration to my mind is, Is this a time to make a new Constitution? Is it not unpatriotic to the last degree to raise all the questions that are raised in this Bill and to face us with the alternative that we must either take the Bill or turn out His Majesty's Ministers?

There are parts of the Bill which are in conflict with every political principle which I have been taught to revere. But, apart from that, consider the position in which we stand. We are engaged now in a conflict with a Power which, whatever else may be said of it, has used the meanest forms of warfare known to mankind—bribery and despoil; and you are placing yourselves at a disadvantage by being absorbed in a violent political conflict. I myself am one of those who are not disposed to object to Party spirit. I believe Party spirit very often preserves political Assemblies from corruption, because it gives people an unselfish desire to use their political Party for that which they believe to be for the good of the State. Here you are raising, among other things, the Irish question. It is much easier to raise the Irish spectre than to lay it once it is raised. And I observe that some people suggest that we should strike Ireland out of the Bill altogether. Perhaps that might be a very desirable thing to do. But that is only one illustration of many that might be given.

Undoubtedly there are serious questions of principle involved in the Bill, and yet with great reluctance I shall feel myself compelled to vote for the Second Reading. I dare say some of your Lordships will say that this is a very lame and impotent conclusion. So it is But I do not believe that I should be doing my duty to the State if I did not at all events try to preserve it from what I believe to be a most unhappy and a most miserable condition of things—that in the middle of this gigantic war we should be divided amongst ourselves. In so doing I shall be voting for a Bill which I believe to be a bad Bill and a mischievous Bill in its effects hereafter; but I believe it would be more mischievous and more injurious to this country if at this time and in these exigencies it could be said that the Government must resign. For these reasons I propose to vote for the Bill under the compulsion that I have described. I hope that I shall be forgiven for doing it, and that the country will ultimately recognise that there was but one thing to do, and that was to place not the least obstruction in the way of those who are defending their country, and to do nothing which would prevent the due prosecution of the war.

VISCOUNT CHAPLIN

My Lords, the noble and learned Earl was good enough to say that I was an older legislator than himself, though he is more advanced in years than I am, but I am very sure that it has been as great a pleasure to your Lordships as it has been to me to hear him speak again after being associated with him for many years in the House of Commons. I think we may congratulate him with all our hearts on the speech he has been able to make to-night. Many of the reasons which he has put before us are reasons with which I most cordially agree, and I fancy that a good many noble Lords will share that opinion with me.

I wish to preface what I have to say by entering a very earnest protest against this Bill on two points in particular. The first of them is this. We are asked to-night to consider a Bill extending reform to Ireland as well as to the rest of the United Kingdom. Therefore, including as it does Ireland and the future representation of Ireland in the Imperial Parliament, what I take exception to is that in this respect the Bill is wholly and entirely incomplete. On that point we are left in various ways very much in the dark as to the policy of the Government and as to their proposals for reform in Ireland. It is true that not long ago in another place proposals were made for redistribution in Ireland, but they were afterwards somewhat hurriedly withdrawn. Why they were withdrawn I do not know. We are now told that other proposals are to be made in their stead, but what those proposals are to be we have not the least idea. We are in complete ignorance with regard to them, an ignorance which, as far as I know, is in all probability shared by the Government themselves In those circumstances it surely was not unreasonable for me to ask, as I ventured to do the other night, that the Second Reading of this Bill might naturally and properly be postponed until the Government were able to place us in full possession of all their proposals, not only for reform here, but for reform in the rest of the Kingdom. The noble Earl (Lord Curzon) took objection to that, and, of course, my request was not acceded to.

What is our position? We do not know, for instance, whether or not the Irish voters in the future may not have, on the basis of population, an influence in the Imperial Parliament and over the management of our affairs in England greater than the voters in the rest of the United Kingdom are to have—a most disproportionate and unfair influence, in my opinion. I am absolutely certain that if the voters in the rest of the United Kingdom were to know of these proposals—and that is the difficulty which we have before us; that is why I asked for a postponement to enable us to bring it home to them they would be up in arms at once against the proposals of His Majesty's Government. Knowing as I do what has happened in the past, I hope I may be pardoned for saving (and I do so without offence) that I think the Bill shows on this point some lack of judgment both on the part of the framers and on the part of the pilots of the Bill in another place. What is the condition of Ireland at the present moment? She has been in open rebellion once, and we were recently threatened with another open rebellion. Everybody knows that Sinn Feinism is extending wider and wider every day, and that the creed of Sinn Fein is an independent Irish Republic. To select this as the time for giving Ireland an unfair influence in the Imperial Parliament is something that I never could have imagined would have entered into the minds of any British Government. It makes it all the more incumbent upon your Lordships, when Bills have reached the stage which this Bill has reached, to take the utmost care that justice and fair play are done to all, because when we arrive at this stage the people have no other guardians but ourselves. That is why I think that the proposals of the Government deserve everything that I have said about them in this respect.

But that is not all. The noble and learned Earl (Lord Halsbury) has pointed out that this Bill—and I think he spoke of other Bills—is controversial. I consider this Bill to be highly controversial in some ways. At any rate, it was so treated elsewhere; and I am afraid that before we get to the end of our discussions in this House it will be found to be controversial here. If that is so, it is in direct contravention of the pledges so definitely given at a much earlier period, both to Parliament and to the country, that no controversial legislation, unless vitally necessary for the successful conduct of the war, would be dealt with during the continuance of the conflict. That cannot be denied; and no satisfactory explanation has been given to us up to the present. It is true that on one occasion the noble Earl who leads the House suggested as an excuse, with his usual admirable skill, that at that time nobody supposed the war was going to last anything like the time it has lasted. With great respect, the noble Earl was entirely mistaken in that statement. There was at all events one man, the late Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener, who knew how long the war would last. That great soldier warned the country from the very commencement of the war that it would certainly last for three years, and I believe he said that it would in all probability last longer. Then what becomes of the excuse given by the noble Earl for a departure from definite pledges given to us with regard to controversial legislation?

May I be allowed to add this? At the time when I left the House of Commons and took my seat in this Assembly, in June, 1916, from my knowledge of that House at the time I can say that it is the plain and simple truth that all Parties there without exception were as deeply pledged as any Parties could be that so long as this war lasted controversial legislation should not be taken in any circumstances, unless it were required for the prosecution of the war. I have yet to learn why pledges which were held to be sacred in 1916 are to be considered worthless in 1917. That is a position which has never been explained, and I think we have every reason to complain of it. More than that, the members of the House of Commons at that time were, I think, nearly all of them convinced that Lord Kitchener was perfectly right; and certainly I had come to the conclusion, and I believe most of the members of the House of Commons had also, that in all probability the war would last a much greater time than they had formerly anticipated. It is no use to tell us now, as the noble Earl did a few nights ago, and again as Viscount Peel did only the other day, how all these things which are being done now have grown up out of the war itself—namely, giving votes to sailors and soldiers and the necessity for including also munition workers and others. All these considerations might have been very good reasons for no Bill at all, but they afford no justification whatever for breaking the pledge which had been solemnly given that in no circumstances would controversial legislation be taken during the war. On the contrary, I venture to say this, that the probability that the Bill would become larger as it was more and more considered and the necessity for making all these inclusions was an admirable reason for getting rid of the Bill or not going on with it, but was no justification whatever for the Government taking the course that they have taken. It afforded additional reasons for postponing the Bill until the war was over and until the members of the Government themselves could devote all their time and all their energies to a measure which is going to be of vital importance to our country and its people in the future.

Here let me endeavour for a moment to enforce this argument by a reference to some of the very interesting facts which Lord Peel put before us during his admirable explanation of the Bill. First of all, he said that there had been four Reform Acts since 1832. I remember the passing of three of them. I came into the House of Commons almost immediately after the passing of the first of the three. Secondly, he told us that between the first and second Acts a period elasped of thirty-five years; thirdly, that between the third and fourth Acts there elapsed thirty-two or perhaps thirty-three years; and, fourthly, he told us that the present Bill was far more comprehensive and dealt with far more numerous questions than any of its predecessors. Therefore if this Bill is so much larger, so much wider in its scope, and so much more important than any of its predecessors, it may very well last for forty or fifty years, or even longer. If that be so, my Lords, what serious difference can it make whether it becomes law this year or next year or even the year after? I really do not see the necessity or the urgency of passing a Bill like this, nor of what I have often called the hurry in trying to pass it, unless you have some special object of your own of which I am in total ignorance.

Let me add one more reason for my view, and one which I believe is without precedent in any passed Reform Bill, and then I will pass to another subject. In days gone by whenever a Reform Bill was under discussion, the constant attendance of all members of the Cabinet in the House of Commons was invariably required by the head of the Government or whoever was acting in that House as head of the Government. What did we see in this case? I do not know whether it is true, but I am told that as a fact during the whole of these discussions upon this vastly important subject the Prime Minister has never taken any part whatever in any single one of them. If that be true, I have no hesitation in saying that it is absolutely without precedent in the history of the passing of Reform Bills in England. Why, my Lords, I remember one that was introduced in February and did not receive the Royal Assent until August; and in those days, as a matter of fact, the passing of a Reform Bill was considered to be sufficient work for the whole of the Parliamentary session. Why is it to be different now? I am not blaming the Prime Minister. It was impossible for him to attend, if what I am told is accurate, but that is an additional reason in my humble judgment why measures of this kind, as my noble friend properly said—vast measures of this kind affecting the future of the country ought not to be dealt with at a time like the present.

But, my Lords, if you had no mandate for reform and if the Government were precluded by their pledges from controversial measures, there was and there is another Bill to which I am going to draw your Lordships' attention which might and could and ought to have been introduced and carried a very long period ago, and that is a Bill to give effect to the Preamble of the Parliament Act, which was introduced and carried when Mr. Asquith was Prime Minister. For that Bill the Government had not only a mandate, but the direct instructions of the electorate, given at a General Election. The present Prime Minister and the late Prime Minister were both in the Cabinet at that time. I think I am justified in asking, why have no steps ever been taken to deal with that question? What is the reason why this has been so long delayed? It cannot be called a Party measure, and for the best of all possible reasons. I may mention this, perhaps, that at a special conference—the only conference that has been held since war was declared—of what is called the National Union, which is the organising body of the Unionist Party, a resolution was carried by acclamation calling upon the Government to bring forward and pass a Bill dealing with this question before the present Reform Bill should come into operation. Seeing that nothing has been done up till now, I think that is a question which might very fairly be put both to the ex-Prime Minister and the present Prime Minister in the House of Commons, and I hope that some of my old friends in that House may put this question some fine day to one of these gentlemen. I do not care which it is, but both of them were in the Cabinet at the time that the Preamble was passed and all the promises and intentions which it contained were put before Parliament and the people. I have often wished I was back again in that Assembly and able to put questions of this sort and some others to the Government at the present time.

I pass away from these considerations for a word or two as to some of the other more important questions connected with this Bill. As to most of them—I may say all of them—they are more for Committee than for Second Reading, but there are some on which I hope I may be allowed to say a word. Proportional representation is one of them. It was one of the foundations on which the edifice was so carefully built up by the Speaker's Conference. It was ruthlessly cut away in another place. I do not remember what reasons were given for departing from one of the chief new recommendations of that Conference, but that recommendation was a very important part of the Report of the Conference. Undoubtedly the principle of proportional representation was fully accepted by that body. On that point, my Lords, I can only say this. I hope that your Lordships will restore it on a broad basis, and that we shall press it to the end. If we do, I venture to say that we shall stand on almost impregnable ground.

Then there is the question of woman suffrage. That question, in my humble judgment, stands upon a somewhat different footing. Hitherto, and for many years, I had opposed that proposal, and opposed it successfully on several occasions in another place, on many grounds. On some of them my views, I frankly own, have been more or less modified, but in regard to others I have difficulty still. One is the objection raised by Mr. John Bright in the other House of Parliament on an occasion when I heard him speak. I had moved the rejection of a measure and he supported me. What was the view that he took? Mr. Bright's view—though I cannot say I altogether agree with him—was that the right to vote carried with it the right to be voted for, and it was, therefore, accompanied by everything which sooner or later must in all human probability follow—namely, women in Parliament, in Governments, and in all other respects on the same footing as men who have votes at the present time, all of whose privileges and rights they would equally enjoy. That was his view, and that was one of the reasons why Mr. Bright opposed the measure There are other views which I entertain myself, but which I think I said just now I had modified. Are your Lordships prepared to see women in Parliament, in the other House, or in this, taking their places upon these benches and exercising all the rights and privileges that your Lordships enjoy at present? If you are, I can only say that I am not.

There is another question which weighs with me on this point more than anything else. What we are proposing now is beyond all question the most vast change that has ever been made in the Constitution of this country, and what I feel most strongly is that it cannot be right to make this change, as it is proposed we should make it now, behind the backs of the people, without allowing the electors of the country to have a single word to say, "Yea" or "No," without allowing them an opportunity to give their sanction to this vast change if they approve it, or to oppose it if they do not. For that reason, sorry as I am to do so, unless there are some means of coming to an understanding and a compromise on this question, I at least shall be compelled to give my vote against that. I do not think it can be justified that we should make this enormous change without giving the people of the country, and the women of the country themselves, the opportunity of saying one single word as to whether or not they think it right that this change should be made. It has sometimes occurred to me that possibly the difficulty might be met by an Amendment in this sense, that the clause relating to women should be allowed to pass in the Bill with a proviso that the provisions shall not come into operation until the electors had had an opportunity, either by reference or by a General Election, of expressing their opinion as to whether or not they desire women to be placed in this position, and that they should not come into operation unless on one of these occasions they decide in favour of their doing so. I have mentioned this now in the hope that it might perhaps, load to a settlement of this question without raising the angry feelings which I fear might very possibly be aroused if the vote, which it is now proposed to give to women, were bluntly refused. But that is a matter for this House to consider, not for me. It is because I have thought it might possibly provide a solution of the question that I have made the suggestion. To give women the vote without allowing the people to have a single word to say in the matter appears to be something, I confess, which is absolutely indefensible.

I have spoken strongly in the earlier part of my speech because I feel very warmly on the attitude of the Government and the action they have taken with regard to proceeding with measures which they were distinctly pledged not to proceed with during the war. I am well aware—I never forget, I hope, for a moment—of the position in which we are placed at present, and I should shrink very much from doing anything which could create dissatisfaction and angry feelings among any classes in this country. There is, I believe, sufficient unrest now among the people of this country, unrest on a whole variety of different grounds on which I will not make any criticisms now, which I should be the last person to desire to see increased. For that reason, and after much reflection, I have decided that it would not be right to do anything to imperil the passing of this Bill unless it be by insisting upon certain provisions of the Speaker's Conference being fulfilled. I am aware of the position in which we stand and the great responsibilities resting upon us all, and on that ground, and on that ground alone, I have decided to refrain from an unbending opposition to this measure. But for that, my Lords, and the difficulties in which I see the country might be placed, what I should have said to the Government on any other occasion would be this—"Fulfil your pledges, drop all controversial measures, give all your mind and thought and energy to that great purpose for which you were expressly created, and, above all, get on with the war. Remember it is not yet won, and you, the Government of this country, have still to win it."

THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD FINLAY)

My Lords, before I say what I wish to say about the Bill I should like to give expression to the feelings, which I am sure largely exist in the mind of your Lordships, of the pleasure with which we listened to the noble and learned Earl who began the debate to-night. I can only say that we are all proud of Lord Halsbury, and I admire very much the way in which, after stating frankly his profound objections to some features in this measure, he said that for all that, on patriotic grounds and in the interests of the public weal, he considered it his duty to vote for the measure on Second Reading. The noble Viscount, Lord Chaplin, asked why we have this measure before us at all.

VISCOUNT CHAPLIN

At this time.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

To that question I think there is a very clear answer. The Register has now been neglected for a great many years, and it is absolutely necessary to prepare for a contingency which might arouse at any moment the necessity for a General Election. No one, I am sure, would say you could have a General Election with any satisfaction upon the very old Register, which is the only one now in force. Some measure of the kind was absolutely necessary.

There was another and to my mind a very powerful consideration. It is this. Something had to be done to give votes to the men who are in arms. We are now a nation in arms, and that we should proceed to a General Election without some step having been taken for the purpose of giving the men who are fighting for us, by land and by sea, an opportunity of saying what their views are, would, I think, be utterly impossible. You could not do it. You had to deal with it, and when you dealt with the two matters I have mentioned you must deal with the subject at large. I trust that the House will give a Second Reading to this measure. No one has moved its rejection, and the reason for that is to be found in the weighty words uttered by the noble and learned Earl, Lord Halsbury, at the beginning of this debate. But in giving the measure a Second Reading it must not be supposed that any vote so given in support means approval of the clause conferring the franchise upon women. I am not going to say a single word to you upon that subject. It will come up in its proper order for discussion; to-day, I shall not enter into the subject, which was treated in so interesting a way yesterday, and on which we no doubt shall hear something more in the course of this debate. I propose to offer a very few observations to your Lordships for the purpose of showing that the fears expressed with regard to the operation of this Bill are exaggerated, and that it has some very good points which should recommend it to your favourable consideration.

In the first place, it effects an enormous simplification of the Register. The state of our law as to qualification of voters was really most unsatisfactory, and that is now put upon a sensible basis. We have a measure for gauging the extent of the change made when we find that in the Eighth Schedule there are enumerated the mere names and dates of a number of Statutes which occupy eight pages of this Bill, all those being Statutes which are repealed to make way for the simpler law by which qualification will in the future be regarded. I venture to think that this in itself is a very great improvement.

I turn to the basis on which the franchise is now put. Speaking broadly it is this. You have the qualification by residence and qualification in respect of having business premises of a certain value. These qualifications bulk most largely in this Bill and they will determine the character of the constituencies in the future. Any man who possesses these two qualifications may exercise both of them, and to my mind that is a most important feature in the Bill. We have heard in days that are now passed a very great deal about one man one vote, and the iniquity of the plural vote. In the plural vote there was one feature which was absolutely right and defensible, I think, and that feature is preserved in the present Bill. It was that where a man has his business premises in a town, and has his residence somewhere else, he should be able to enjoy a vote in respect of each of those two localities. He is an integral part of the life of his constituency. If any meeting for the consideration of any public question were called, that meeting would be the poorer if he were not there, because he is a man, it may be, to whom the members of that community look up for guidance with regard to the practical affairs of life. Now we have this long controversy settled by preserving that portion of the plural vote against which I think no valid argument ever was advanced, and, in preserving it, you will preserve by far the most important portion of the plural vote in point of numbers, and certainly in point of the weight which should be attached to it as giving you the true elements for your constituencies.

The addition to the number of voters made by this Bill will, of course, be con- siderable. It has been estimated at 2,000,000 males. That I believe, is somewhat of an exaggeration, but no doubt there will be something between 1,000,000 and 2,000,000 men added when the Bill becomes law. The addition to the list of voters is one which I think should be faced by your Lordships in the spirit to which the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, referred when he said— Do not let us deal with it in any grudging spirit. Let us look at what has to be done, and see whether we may frankly accept the situation and deal with this addition of between 1,000,000 and 2,000,000 men as voters without being unduly alarmed. I think that the history of the past rather fortifies the advice which my noble friend gave to your Lordships' House. Every extension of the franchise in the past has been received with dismay and prophecies that it meant the end of the world. When the Reform Bill of 1832 was passed a very well-known man at that time, Mr. Croker, wrote to the Duke of Wellington announcing that he had made up his mind to retire from public life; and, if I recollect rightly, the Duke's answer was in one sentence, "I cannot conceive your reasons for the course you are taking." That the apprehensions were exaggerated was demonstrated in a few years, for, if I mistake not, not many years elapsed before the very Party which had most violently protested against the passage of that Bill was again in power. When you come to 1868, to the great extension of the franchise in boroughs, it was said, "This at least is the end of the world." That measure was followed by a Conservative Government being in power from 1874 to 1880. Then came the third stage, when in 1885 the franchise was again extended. Grave apprehensions were expressed and felt. A Unionist Government was in power for twenty years after that extension had been made. All these extensions introduced new classes of voters to the franchise, men belonging to different classes from those who had previously enjoyed the franchise.

There is a large extension in numbers of the constituencies in this Bill, but I do not think that it is true that, to anything like the same extent or in the same proportion, the additions to the list of voters will be of classes different from those who have enjoyed the vote already. The first great addition will be in respect of the residence qualification. All the sons of the house- holder living in his house, if they are of adult age, will, in virtue of their residence, be qualified to have the vote. That accounts for a very great part of the addition that will be effected by the Bill to the list of male voters, but these new voters do not belong to a class different in any way from those who have the franchise already. The numbers are increased, but there is no reason for the apprehension which was expressed in the old days when a new class of voter altogether was admitted to a share of power. Further than that, the increase in the numbers will be, to a very considerable extent, due to the shortening of the period of qualification for obtaining the vote to six months' residence. I should like to say a word or two with regard to that feature in the Bill. I think that it has been received with almost unanimous approval. I am not speaking of one Party alone. I think that among all the Parties in the House there has been a very large amount of agreement that this was a good reform in the law, and that it could not be resisted. This, of course, does not introduce voters of another class. And then you have a cognate alteration, by which the period necessary for qualification is not interrupted by the voter's moving his residence. Under the Bill as it stands, in a London constituency the voter may go to any other part of London, which is treated as one borough for the purposes of the Bill, and his residence will still count, it will not be interrupted. He may go, if he is in London, to any contiguous county—to Kent, to Essex, to Middlesex, to Surrey; and the residential qualification will still ran on. And so with regard to all other constituencies throughout the country. I think that feature of the Bill, at all events, is one to which no one could very well object.

I now come to a change introduced by this measure which, I think, will be regarded with the warmest approval by every member of the House, and that is the provision for securing the franchise and the exercise of the franchise to sailors and soldiers. Provision is made by the Bill that if any man is on war service, wherever he be, either in the Naval Forces or in the Army, he shall be qualified just in the same way as if he were actually residing in the constituency where he would have been but for his service. I think that is a most excellent thing, and even if it stood by itself it would go far to justify any measure that contained it. But more than that, the Bill goes on to make provision for ensuring that he shall be able to exercise the franchise, that his absence shall not prevent his giving his vote. Provision is made, in the first instance, entitling him to be put upon the Register without any claim being lodged by himself. It is the duty of the registration officer to put him upon the Absent Voters List, and that entitles him to have a ballot paper, which can be filled up wherever be is, and which can be lodged within the time after the ordinary close of the poll which may be fixed by Order in Council to enable men in this position to record their votes.

And it does not stop there, because there are a great number of our soldiers and sailors who are at such a distance that you could not within any conceivable time to be applied by Order in Council for keeping the election open prevent the declaration of the poll before they had voted. These eases are met by a provision which strikes me as a very admirable one. It is provided that men on service may vote by proxy. They may take their vote, to be lodged for them, to persons who are mentioned in the Act for the purpose. And let me observe, in passing, that this right of voting by proxy is extended to the members of the Merchant Service. I think this a well-deserved tribute to what the Merchant Service have done for us in this war. We are all proud of the Navy, and it is always in our thoughts; but we have just the same reason to think with gratitude and admiration of the Merchant Service, to which we owe our daily bread, and which, without the glamour and excitement which may attend the more militant Services, have done with unflinching courage under the most trying circumstances work without which this country could not have continued to exist. I think that the provisions as to the Naval and Military Services and the Merchant Service will have universal approval. And I do not think for myself that there will be many found to drop a tear over the disfranchisement of the conscientious objector.

The Absent Voters List—and I say this in consequence of some questions which were put earlier in the debate—includes not merely soldiers and sailors but also another class of persons. They are put into that List, however, only upon their lodging a claim for that purpose. There are a great many people the nature of whose avocations is such that it is more than probable that they will not be in a position to record their votes personally on the polling day. Take railway guards, who are taken away by their duties perhaps many hundreds of miles from the scene of voting. And so of other occupations. Provision is made that they may apply to be put upon the Absent Voters List; they are entitled to be put upon it, and they will be entitled to have, a ballot paper and to vote within the time provided by Order in Council for the lodging of the ballot.

There is one other feature of the Bill which to me, as for many years Member for a University constituency, affords great gratification, and that is that the University vote, which we were for a long time told was doomed, is not only preserved but extended. You still have the older Universities—Oxford, Cambridge, London, and the four Scottish Universities—which have enjoyed the vote for so many years; you have also eight other Universities—Leeds, Liverpool, and so on; and I think it is a most gratifying feature that, instead of destroying the recognition of education as a qualification for the franchise, you actually extend it by this measure.

The provision made for registration is a very workmanlike provision. The registration officers are the clerks to the county councils or the town clerks. They have the necessary assistance for doing the work. And then an appeal is given to the Judge of the County Court. There might be apprehensions that the dealing with such appeals, which are appeals not merely on points of law but also on questions of fact, might absorb so much of the time of the County Court Judge as not to leave him the leisure necessary for the discharge of his proper duties, and provision is accordingly made that in suitable cases there may be assistant Judges added for the purpose of relieving the pressure upon the time of the County Court.

The last feature that I will mention is one of which I think most people approve—namely, that the elections are all to be on one day. It may be said, of course, that having the elections going on for three weeks provides a very interesting, exciting, and educational time for the country. It also has this effect, that if the first elections go a particular way it very much increases the inclination of many constituencies to go the same way; and I think that one effect of having the elections all on the same day may be that you will not have majorities quite so large in the future as you had before. That is not an unmixed evil; but I think the general sense is in favour of preventing a General Election from extending over so many weeks as it hitherto has done.

I have mentioned, I believe, some nine points in favour of the Bill; and I submit to your Lordships that on the whole the apprehensions felt with regard to the effects of this Bill, treated from the point of view from which I have treated it, are exaggerated. The Bill possesses many good features, and there is an absolutely over-whelming case on public grounds why your Lordships should afford it on its Second Reading a favourable reception.

LORD COURTNEY OF PENWITH

My Lords, I shall endeavour to be brief, but whether I shall succeed or not the event must show. For the purposes of being brief I shall direct myself entirely to one question—namely, the question of the scope and manner of our action in dealing with the Bill as a whole. I shall not enter into the details to which reference has been made so far in the course of the debate, where those details will necessarily reappear and be the subject of discussion in Committee. I shall, for example, say nothing about woman suffrage. I shall say nothing about conscientious objectors. These things will undoubtedly arise and will have to be dealt with hereafter. Therefore we may put them by for the present.

I shall go to what I conceive to be the heart of the Bill, and for this reason. I have observed so far that no one of your Lordships has expressed any desire to reject this Bill, or even to put it aside. I will go further. No one of your Lordships, although expressing repugnance to some of its details, has clearly expressed an intention of voting against and throwing out any leading detail of the Bill. My noble friend Lord Chaplin went further than anybody else, but he did not go very far. In a faltering, hesitating, and uncertain way he suggested only that the concession of the woman's vote, about which he had to some extent changed his mind, might be dependent upon some kind of referendum to the nation. He did not declare that upon that condition, and upon that condition only, would he assent to that clause. So that I am approaching a Bill which your Lordships will not reject, and no leading feature of which you intend to reject.

But many of your Lordships have said, Why have a Bill at all? I differ entirely from those noble Lords who think the production of this Bill at this time injudicious or uncalled-for. I believe that we have very troublous times before us. When the war ends our difficulties will not cease. We shall have many social questions at home of an urgent character calling for the attention of the Legislature. I say "we." I do not expect for my own part to be a participator in those debates. But the Legislature when the war comes to an end will not cease to be occupied with very grave and serious questions—social questions, economic questions, not only economic questions affecting this nation but affecting the whole of the civilised world. Vast schemes may, perhaps, be produced; certainly they will be debated; they have been foreshadowed—international organisation for the supply of raw materials, the distribution of the food that may be produced all over the world, and many other economic questions of profound and far-reaching importance.

Those of you who are most fervent in the necessity for prosecuting this war to an end, look to an end. To what end? That war shall not be repeated; that we shall never again suffer such a fearful visitation as that which we have gone through during the last three years. For this purpose we, raise a multitude of questions of profound and deep importance requiring all the intellect, all the imagination, all the force, of every statesman of every nation for their due fulfilment. We talk freely of the Family of Nations, of the Society of Nations, of the League of Nations. If you venture to probe what is meant by those phrases to those who think and have thought about them, you will know how deeply they run, how far-reaching they are spread, what questions are involved in their solution, what force of intellect and of thought and of knowledge is required for their proper solution. It would be a bad time if we began when the war ceased. We shall then find ourselves confronted with a loss of capital, with the destruction of the machinery of industry, with a supply of food which the best-informed men tell us will then and for some time be deficient. It will be a bad time then to be engaged in the question of reconstructing your Legislature. If you can do it now, if you can prepare the mind and the intelligence and the experience of the nation so that when the war ceases you may have at hand an instrument for the consideration and the settlement of the issues to which I have referred, you will then be fortunate in the prospect of being able to arrive at a proper solution; and you will have very small prospects of such a result if you leave this work until the war comes to an end. That, I think, is the best justification for the abnormal action taken in the matter of the Speaker's Conference. The noble Marquess (Lord Salisbury) who began the debate yesterday, commented upon the abnormal character of that action. It is abnormal.

The noble Marquess made play with the present Government for having resorted to Conferences, to Commissions, and to Committees. The play would have been more effective did not one remember that it is a charge which has been brought against Government after Government with equal accuracy, and, I am afraid I must say, with the greatest respect to the noble Marquess, with equal futility. These are devices to which Governments are driven by necessity. You find the instruments that you possess insufficient for your purpose. They fail you. You have not the information, and you have to plant upon the mind of the nation the thought and the experience and the knowledge which you bring together by the operation of Commissions and Committees. Failing them you could not deal in a satisfactory manner with the problems which you are bound to grapple with, and so you resort to these devices, and they serve you well. My Lords, I remember years ago a cartoon by Mr. Tenniel in which Mr. Disraeli was represented as a conjuring man in a drawing-room entertainment, turning out of his hat rival Royal Commissions, Select Committees, Conferences, and all the other machinery for settling questions with which he had to deal. So all Governments in turn have to resort to machinery of that kind. The machinery was resorted to here because it was found that certain problems which were urgent and demanding solution could not be solved in the House of Commons. The Government, not devoid of ability and not wanting in power, put their hands to them and failed, and so Mr. Speaker was invited to see whether he could not call together a number of capable, experienced men, not necessarily leaders of Parties, men who should be animated with a desire to work together to produce a result that might command the attention of the Legislature in both Houses, and command the assent of the nation. That is what has been done. The result is, my Lords, that no one of your Lordships thinks it is possible to set aside a Bill which has been founded upon the recommendations of that Conference, and the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack has just addressed to us a convincing speech, the moral of which is that every one of the propositions contained in the Bill, founded upon the recommendations of the Conference, is the best of all possible proposals for effecting the objects in the Bill. I accept the conclusions of the Lord Chancellor. As far as the Bill itself goes in comprehending the recommendations of the Conference, it is extremely good. The fault of the Bill is that it does not contain all that the Conference recommended. It is wanting in very material circumstances, and the question before us now, as I conceive it, is, Can the deficient items be restored? Have we before us a power and a promise of being able to put them back, having due regard for all the circumstances of our present position? That is the question which I ask your Lordships to consider.

Lord Burnham gave us last night a very interesting description of the action of the Conference. He sat upon it, the only one of your Lordships who sat upon it from beginning to end. What was his statement? That the propositions of the Conference were inter-dependent one upon another; that they were adopted by the Conference as a whole; that if one had failed another would not have been secured; that if you had given up one leading feature, another leading feature could not be accepted. You had proportional representation, you had the alternative vote, and they depended one upon the other. You had the simplification of the Register, you had the extension of the suffrage, and you had proportional representation, all dependent one upon the others; and the real charge brought against the House of Commons in dealing with this Bill is that they refused to allow the scheme to remain as a whole, that they took away one essential part of it and thereby reduced the rest to an incomplete and unpromising solution of the question—a solution which does not correspond to what you really desire, in not giving us the promise of that Legislature which shall be competent to deal with the problems to which I have referred—namely, the problems which will arise at the end of the war. It is the restitution of that necessary element in the compromise which to my mind is required to make the Legislature of the future competent for the discussions of the future, and it is the power of easily making that restitution which I am here to point out to your Lordships, so that you shall not be turned back at the outset by the fear that the task put before you involves too great a demand upon your attention, too great a demand upon your time, and not only that, but too great a demand upon the country and the Government and the House of Commons to allow the restitution to be made.

The necessity of the missing item is one that might be urged and often has been urged before, and I do not at this stage, wish to dilate upon it, but I will put it before you in this way. The noble Marquess who initiated the discussion last night spoke of the confidence in the people which he entertained—the enthronement of a democracy to which he was prepared to assent. That word "democracy" is one that I am not very fond of using. It seems to me that we are in great danger of employing it, as I think I often see it employed, as a mere word of cant, not covering what is properly understood by democracy, but what in a confused way is limited to one class, often the most numerous class of the community. There is a spirit abroad which suggests that democracy and proletariat are identical, the same thing. I venture to suggest that history, experience, and clear thought demand that there shall be no confusion between these terms. I put my trust in no class. "Put not your trust in princes" are old words of wisdom. But I think experience must have shown everybody who watches the course of the world, especially as it is moving of late years, that to put your trust in the proletariat would be equally vain. If we use English words and talk of the working-man, the Workmen's Party, and the Labour Party, these in their masses prove, as no single class of the community could prove, that the confidence which can be expressed, and may be rightly expressed, is a confidence that must be imposed in the nation as a whole, and not in selected classes of the community. "A nation may go mad," as Bishop Butler said, and people since have conceived that Bishop Butler was perfectly right in his suggestion—a nation may go mad, but it is at rare intervals.

The nation as a whole is sound, and has a way of recovering itself. It maintains its equilibrium and it recovers its equilibrium. It is in that way like the vast orbs of the Universe; every nation which is one, which has the feeling of common life and common expression (which is not to be interpreted in the actions of one class or the opinions or desires of one class)—every nation which is thus united does in a sort of natural way recover its equilibrium even after disturbance. So, my Lords, in order to secure a Legislature in which we must put confidence, that Legislature should be an expression of the. "whole mind of the nation." It should have within it the "exhaustive representation of the people." These are phrases which I quote from a little book which has recently been published and which I would recommend to the perusal of your Lordships.

I am speaking here endeavouring to impress upon you one particular aspect of this problem. I knew it would come forward sooner or later. I had always thought that when it did come forward there would have been another voice beside mine, more powerful with your Lordships, which should address you in support of the same view. The phrases "the whole mind of the nation," "the exhaustive representation of the people," I take from a little book in which are published Lord Grey's last words. They are contained in the central chapter of that book which speaks of "the People's House," and they express the ideas which Lord Grey, the Paladin of his generation, an ardent fearless man, breast-high with conviction, would have spoken from these benches had he not been taken from us. Speaking in the remembrance of his private as well as his public last words, I desire to press upon your Lordships' attention this view, so continuously, so firmly, so constantly held by Lord Grey—"the whole mind of the nation," "the exhaustive representation of the people." The machinery which you have left in the Bill gives us no promise of that conclusion. It makes the representation of the people a matter of hazard. You cannot tell, when a General Election is taken, whether the result of that Election does or does not correspond to the balance of the judgment of the people at large. Not only does it make it one of hazard, but it makes it a piece-meal representation, often leaving out whole classes of your citizens sometimes throughout the country, sometimes in one great section of the country only, but always making the result of your action an imperfect, an uncertain, a distrusted, and, it must be added, a diffident Legislature, because the Legislature is never certain that it has within itself the exact image of the outer nation which it professes to represent.

Lord Burnham last night quoted a sentence of Mr. Burke. Burke was very bold. He said the House of Commons should be "the express image of the people." He did not scruple to borrow from the Hebrews a phrase which is most appropriate and most worthy of attention, and I follow humbly and say "ditto" to Mr. Burke. The House of Commons should be "the express image of the people" if you want a House of Commons that should be competent for the duties that will be thrown upon it. The House of Commons in this Bill is not of a kind having the promise of being the "express image of the people."

I know not whether my noble friend Lord Pontypridd is present. I know he intended to attend the debates, and I would appeal to him, if he were here, for a confession which I know he was ready to make in public, as he has made it in private. He was for some years the Chairman of the Liberal Party in Wales. What was the Conservative Party? There was in the four years of his Chairmanship a single Conservative Member for Wales. Such was the machinery that you had adopted that the whole representation of the people of Wales in the House of Commons was the representation of one side only. The representation of the people of Scotland has been perverted in the same way. And, my Lords, I cannot fathom the amount of mischief which in the past years was wrought by the misrepresentation of the opinion of Ireland in the House of Commons through its representatives. In critical times that opinion has been distorted and exaggerated. You cannot tell what kind of representation of that opinion would be sent to the House of Commons if a General Election were to be had to-day. I feel assured of this, that whatever that representation might turn out to be it would be a misrepresentation of Ireland, because it would be a representation leaving out classes which form a necessary part of the organisation of the Irish people. It would give over-representation throughout the greater part of Ireland to Sinn Feiners, and they would be counterbalanced by a small, inadequate representation in another corner of extreme men of another type. The true mixing up of classes which even in Ireland are to be found sustaining its national life could not be introduced in the House of Commons under the existing machinery. Nor can you depend upon introducing, under existing machinery, a true representation of the opinion of Scotland, of England, of Wales.

If you want to reproduce an Assembly which shall commend by its knowledge, its experience, its aspirations, its designs, its conflicts and its solutions of conflicts, the respect of the world as representing this people, you must resort to another method of election and another method of representation. Instead of dividing your country into single-Member districts, each returning a single Member, you must as far as you can—I do not wish to call for the impossible, and I will point out what is open to you within the scope of practical action—replace that representation by uniting districts together and having a representation of the united district, five, six, or seven, whatever the number of Members may be, who will represent the different divisions of thought, experience, and desire within that district. Then, by getting a true representation of your towns and counties you can get a true representation of your island and kingdom, and you can get an Assembly which shall possess the authority and command the influence of which I have hinted. Is that an impossible task?

This is the question which appears to me to be a very proper one for a Second Reading speech—in what spirit shall we go into Committee on the Bill, having regard to what I conceive to be the high necessity of attempting the task I have described? I hope to show you, without trespassing too much on your attention, that it will not be hard, but, on the contrary, quite easy to insert in the Bill provisions which will altogether restore the character which was aimed at by the Speaker's Conference, and which will make the Parliament of the future a true representation of the whole mind of the nation and the exhaustive collection of the opinions of the kingdom. How far is that possible? In the body of the Bill, my Lords, all that is required is the insertion of this, "In any constituency entitled to return three or more Members, when an Election is held each voter shall have one vote and shall exercise it according to the principles of the single transferable vote." That is, in fact, all that is wanted in the body of the Bill. Yes, but you say, "What about the Schedules, registration, and the Redistribution Commissioners? Think of the work you would throw upon them, upon the Government, and upon the House of Commons if you return this Bill to them with all these demands for action." My Lords, if you do me the honour of following me, I hope I shall convince you that there is no real difficulty.

The Registration Clauses to which the noble and learned lord on the Woolsack called attention would be absolutely unchanged. There is the same registration for the elector, whether he has a vote for a division of Manchester or for the whole of Manchester. There is the same registration officer, the same machinery, and the same registration machinery. What, therefore, is wanted? Take your boroughs. Do not disturb the one-Member boroughs, do not disturb the two-Member boroughs, but give and restore to the three, four, and five-Member boroughs the unity which you have taken away by sub-division. All you have to do is to remove the sub-division, take up the partitions, and you have the area, the electors, and the machinery under which you may obtain a complete representation of the area in question. It is just like a Japanese house. Take away the partition and you have the house in its openness and completeness exposed to you. Take, for example, a three-Member constituency. Plymouth is made a three-Member constituency under the Bill, and it is divided into three separate districts. Do not divide into three districts; let the three districts be one. Plymouth is a three-Member area under proportional representation. Leicester is precisely in the same position; it is divided into three districts. Undo the work you have wasted in division; let Leicester remain as before, united, and it is done. So with the four-Member towns. Take away the unnecessary divisions and the town is restored to its old unity. So also with the five-Member towns.

There is no demand upon your time or upon the time of the Redistribution Commissioners. If there were, I should have no scruple in recalling to the noble Earl who leads the House his promise that if this House chooses to put back proportional representation the Redistribution Commissioners will not refuse their assistance to the new scheme. But there is no demand on their labour except that of the minutest character. They have already done the necessary work. The only thing that would be done is in cases where the borough runs to more than live Members, as some do to six, seven, nine, and even to fifteen Members. The Speaker's Conference thought it unsafe to go beyond a five-Member constituency. I accept the compromise, but I wish they had had courage to go a little further. What then is wanted when you get to a borough entitled to six Members? It is divided in your Bill into six separate districts. Make two sets of three; you have only to put three on one side and three on the other, and the thing is done. So with the seven and the eight-Member constituencies. The hardest case is that of Glasgow, which has fifteen Members. The Commissioners there have made five districts south of the Clyde and ten districts north of the Clyde. Why not unite the districts south of the Clyde; then take the districts north, make them five and five, and you have your areas in which to apply the principle of proportional representation. Let it be observed that it practically does not matter how your line of division goes. It does matter a great deal in single-Member constituencies because you introduce the power, the principle, and the mischief of jerrymandering, but in the case of the single transferable vote it does not matter what three you take out and make one or what five you make one; within that five and within that three you will get a true representation of the division. You cannot manœuvre because you have got within it all the divisions of opinion.

The restoration within the Bill, so far as the boroughs are concerned, is as simple as I have shown, and in London it is not more difficult. I should be prepared to treat London in the same practical fashion. Let the boroughs that are one or two-Member constituencies remain. Let there be no division of boroughs. But if a borough in London, such as Wandsworth, or Hackney, or St. Pancras is entitled to three or four or five Members, instead of dividing that borough into divisions, as you have done, take away the divisions and restore its unity. This would be a practical restoration in the Bill as conceived by the Speaker's Conference. It would be a restoration to a position which would enable you to have confidence in the future House of Commons.

The Speaker's Conference abstained from extending the principle to counties, and if we propose to extend it to counties we depart from the powerful position we take in relying on the Speaker's Conference as a one and indivisible compromise. If, as I am told, there is a disposition in the House of Commons to accept a larger scheme in preference to a smaller, and if, as cannot be denied, there has arisen in the counties of England a great demand on the part of agriculturists to have the principle of proportional representation applied to them, there would be no practical difficulty in making the extension in the scheme that I have described applicable to the counties as well as to the boroughs and to London.

Is this too serious or too great a demand? I think not. Look at it narrowly, look at it in a practical sense, look at it as if you were working out a problem in political mechanics and I think that you will say also that it is not too great a demand. The very effective speech that was delivered by Mr. Hayes Fisher elsewhere, which turned so many votes in the last Division with reference to this question, was based upon a misrepresentation. It is not for me to say he misrepresented, but it was a misrepresentation, misleading the intelligence of those who heard it. There is no question of a demand upon time or attention or thought beyond the possibility of being easily met. The problem could be, and ought to be, worked out.

I have kept your Lordships too long, but in conclusion may I remind you of an episode in your history not so far back as some of the things to which reference has been made, which might, and I think should, encourage you to take this step. This principle of proportional representation is not a new principle. It was first raised in the House of Commons in a Parliamentary sense fifty years ago. In 1867 it received the high support in the House of Commons of Lord Cranborne as he then was, Mr. Lowe, John Stuart Mill, Mr. Fawcett, and others, but it was opposed, as a novelty is apt to be, by the Leader of the House, Mr. Disraeli. It was opposed by Mr. Gladstone. It was still more strongly opposed by Mr. Bright, and it failed in the House of Commons. What happened? The Bill came up to your Lordships' House. Lord Cairns proposed to re-introduce the principle in a slightly different form, and he moved the insertion of a clause to carry his proposal into effect. What happened? I have refreshed my memory by looking at Hansard. I am not going to inflict upon your Lordships any extracts from it, but a short statement of what happened will interest many of you, being as you are, perhaps, sons or grandsons of those who figured in that debate. Lord Cairns moved the insertion of his clause. The first man who supported him was Lord Russell, the ex-Prime Minister, a man of great authority on constitutional matters. He was supported by Lord Spencer, a future Viceroy of Ireland, by Lord Stanhope, by Lord Cowper, another future Viceroy of Ireland; by Lord Carnarvon, by Lord Houghton, whose hospitable mind was ever open for fresh ideas; and by Lord Stratford de Redelyffe. Against there were two holders of office—Lord Malmesbury and the Duke of Marlborough. There was a third name, but I need not mention it. It was all the talents against two placemen, and the voting was 142 against 51, nearly three to one. The principle of proportional representation, rejected in the House of Commons, was, when the Bill came up to your Lordships, put back by Lord Cairns, with the approbation of the predecessors of your Lordships, to the extent to which I have shown. What followed? The new clause went down to the House of Commons, and Mr. Disraeli recommended the House of Commons to accept what was so plain and so strongly the opinion of their Lordships. Though Mr. Bright continued to protest, and Mr. Gladstone was not happy, the House of Commons accepted it, and the principle stood until that unhappy time when, by the evil concurrence, not of atoms but of Party leaders, we got one-Member constituencies. This example might encourage your Lordships, and I hope will encourage you, to restore to this Bill that essential, cardinal principle which the House of Commons dropped out of the Report of the Speaker's Conference. This example should encourage you to restore it in the hope and the certainty that if you do restore it with strength and resolution it will be maintained, and will bring back the essential principle without the inclusion of which the Bill in its final form you yourselves may well be slow to approve.

THE MARQUESS OF CREWE

My Lords, in one respect I find myself in full agreement with my noble friend who has just sat down—that is to say, I have never been able to share the view of those noble Lords who have expressed the opinion that His Majesty's Government have made a serious blunder in introducing this great measure into Parliament at this particular timei. I have felt myself, all through these discussions, that a large and general measure of reform was made absolutely indispensable by circumstances. Curiously enough, I believe that the first strong impulse towards the preparation of a new Register arose from the idea, which proved afterwards to be erroneous, that without a new Register and the consequent possibility of a new Parliament it would be impossible to effect a change of Government if the country so desired. As we know, the absence of a Register and the impossibility of dissolving Parliament proved in fact to be no bar to a change of Government. But all through the discussion, the steps of which have been described both by the noble Viscount opposite (Lord Peel) and also by the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack, it became clearly evident that once a new Register was suggested, once it became certain that you could not give the vote to sailors and soldiers—that great citizen army which, as we all agree, is if possible more fully entitled to vote than anybody else—without opening up a great number of other franchise questions, then no choice was left to His Majesty's Government but to bring in the great and inclusive measure which we are now considering. The main reason for the inclusion of the woman's vote in this measure, to which exception has been taken—was taken, for instance, by my noble friend, Lord Chaplin—on the ground that it had never been before the country, is founded on what I have just stated.

Those who share generally the same view of this question of popular representation as I do would be prepared to maintain that the residential qualification is the most natural one for the foundation for our electoral system, and the fact that residence is the principal basis for the vote gives therefore satisfaction to those who hold that view. And the shortening of the period of qualification from a year to six months is also a proposal which, as the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack said, has received even a greater measure of general agreement than the enlargement of the residential qualification. It is also the fact that the freely enlarged interpretation of the term "successive occupation" is a valuable provision, which I believe will also be generally approved. Because it is an undoubted feature of our existing system of registration that its object in many respects has appeared to be to keep people off the Register, to make it positively difficult for a man to get on, even though he had made some quite unimportant change of residence, whereas now the new definition of continuity, added to the shortening of the period of qualification, makes it far easier for a man to get on to the Register.

On the other hand, I think it cannot be disputed that in the view of those of whom I have been speaking the continuance, and even in some respects the enlargement, of the business vote represents something of a compromise. The noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack explained what in his view were the general merits of the plural vote. The plural vote has been a subject of acute controversy both in his House and outside of it for many years past, and the fact that in the Speaker's Conference this form of the plural vote was agreed to must be taken as an attempt to arrive at a halfway house between the extreme view of those who believe that universal suffrage forms the proper system and the opposing view of those who contend that property ought to be, if not the main, at any rate a principal, subject of representation in Parliament.

But on this I am bound to say that when Lord Burnham spoke of departures which he had observed from the conclusions reached in the Speaker's Conference, there was one departure of that kind to which he did not allude I mean the departure from this extent of the plural vote which was arrived at in the Report stage in another place, namely, that those who possessed an occupation qualification in a different division of the same borough are now to become entitled to exercise the vote for residence and also the occupation vote. That determination will undoubtedly add an enormous number of plural voters to the Register. I have heard the figure put at considerably over 100,000; and it is, I think, fair to point out that this does represent a quite substantial departure from an agreement which, as we understood, had been reached in the Speaker's Conference. The University vote in itself no doubt also represents a compromise between the two extreme views. I do not myself profess to regret its retention, and if it was to be retained I value its extension to the newer Universities.

Then we come to the question of the women's vote. I remember that when this subject was last before the House I was sitting on the Bench opposite, and I made a speech on the subject which the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, who followed me, appeared to consider displayed a spirit of almost revolting cynicism. So far as I remember, the view that I took was this, that whereas I had never been able to join myself to either of the two advanced parties in this matter at all—the suffragists, or the anti-suffragists—I considered that it was one which must be left to the determination of the people of the country, that public opinion must be allowed to assert itself. I think I expressed the view that sooner or later female suffrage would be given, but I was not prepared myself to take any active steps to hurry it on.

There were, I believe, two reasons in particular which weighed with those who were opposed to the grant of the vote to women. Apart from what I may call the crude and simple view that women ought not to have the vote because they were not included in the Army or the Navy or the Police, there was a strong body of opinion which conceived that the principal objection to giving this vote was the remoteness of women as a class from so many sides of public occupation and interest. It was felt that whereas there was only one line in life—namely, the bringing up of small children—which was exclusively assigned to women, there was a large number, dozens, of important occupations winch were confined entirely to men. Women took practically no part in commerce, except perhaps in the humbler forms of book-keeping; they took no part in the heavier forms of industry, the iron trade and so on; they were completely unconnected with every form of engineering; and as regards what are called the liberal professions, except for the small number of women who became doctors, the Church, the Bar, and the solicitors' profession were altogether without representatives. Now, that state of things has been changed by the war to a not inconsiderable extent. It is not, of course, true that all those occupations from which women were practically excluded before are now filled by them. But it would be no longer true to say that there are great areas of national work from which women are entirely excluded or from which they exclude themselves; and I cannot help thinking that this change in fact will have operated largely in bringing about the change of opinion on this matter which has been so marked, and which is, indeed, marked by the inclusion of the enfranchisement of women in the existing Bill.

It was also felt before by many, I am sure, that to add at a stroke millions of voters to the Register, by far the larger proportion of whom were altogether uninterested in public affairs, would be a serious step to take That, again, has been greatly modified by what has occurred. We know now that the larger proportion of women who will come on to the Register will be keenly and deeply interested at any rate in the public affairs of the highest concern at this moment in the country. I feel, therefore, now that it is generally recognised that the Parliamentary vote ought not to be treated as a form of decoration or medal but has to be regarded as the exercise of a trust, that the country as a whole may be taken, in spite of what has been said, to have given a general verdict of approbation on the subject. I anticipate, therefore, that your Lordships will not desire to alter the provisions of the Bill in this respect.

The expedient of the alternative vote as suggested in the Bill appears to be a necessary one. I have no desire to enter at any length on the subject upon which my noble friend who has just sat down spoke—namely, that of proportional representation—except to say that, whatever the attractions of that system may be, I cannot believe for a moment that they were enhanced by the manner in which the proposition was put forward in the Bill as it appeared in another place. The topic was there treated experimentally, but, as I venture to think, experimentally in the least attractive way possible. In the first place, it was ushered in with a series of the most portentous Regulations and Schedules in a Parliamentary Paper, Cd. 8768, which gave the impression that an extreme complication which, if it affected any one, would affect only the returning officer, would in fact affect everybody who was to give a vote under this system.

But I am bound to say that the particular case of London, upon which I naturally happen to be most informed, also operated markedly against the adoption of the proposal. Its application to London was confined to eight boroughs out of the twenty-nine of which London is composed, and the London Members could not so easily see why they were made the subject of an experiment of this kind when Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, and Sheffield were not. That, I think, was one consideration which affected their minds. It affected them to this extent, that on the last Division which took place only two, I think, of the London Members voted in favour of the proposal.

The only other point on which I wish to say a word is that of the absent voter and the proxy vote, of which the noble and learned Lord spoke with marked approbation in the course of his observations. I quite recognise that the institution of those votes is necessary, but I cannot regard their existence with any enthusiasm. I think it is a misfortune that they had to be instituted, but I entirely agree that instituted they had to be.

Further debate adjourned until to-morrow.