The Sun.
London, England, 1867-05-10 00:00:00

THE REFORM BILL.

The house then went into committee on the bill in
clause 3.

The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER moved the
amendment to the clause.

Mr. HIBBEKT said he thought that would be
a convenient moment for him to proceed to lay
his amendment to tho clause before the house.
lie proposed that the following words should
be added at the end of the clause :—" Provided that where
the owner is rated in respect of a dwelling house
instead of the occupier, the occupier may claim to
be rated for the purpose of acquiring the fran-
chise, in the same manner, and subject to
the same conditions in and subject to which au occupier
may claim to be registered under the Act of the 14th and
13th Victoria, in reference to compound householders of a
clear yearly value of not less than .ElO ; and all the provi-
sions of the said Act shall apply accordingly."
Mr. BRETT reminded the house of the concessions
which the Government had already made, and character-
iseerthe conduct of the Opposition as intended to destroy
the bill altogether.
Mr. MILL deprecated making any distinction between
voters above or below £lO, and predicted that if the clause
were amended as proposed by the Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer it would lead to renewed and indispensable agita-
tion.

General PEEL complained that the house had drifted
into committee without any adequate discussion of the
principle of the measure.

Mr. CILADTONE said the hon. an 'learned gentleman

the member for Holston had made an appeal to the com-
mittee which he was unwilling to pass by in silence. The
hon. and learned gentleman claimed great consideration for
his party on account of the concessions which they had
already made, and he laid down the principle that those
concessions ought to be reciprocated. (Hear, hear.) But
what were the great concessions to which he referred? The
first was the giving up the dual vote, but he forgot that it
had been denounced by the right hon. gentleman the mem-
ber for Oxford, and that the Chancellor of the Exchequer
had himself stated that he could not find a single advocate
of it upon the Conservative benches. The hon. and learned
gentleman also referred to the reduction of the residential
qualification from two years to one year, as another great
concession; but he seemed to forgetthaton that they forced
that point to the issue of a division, and were beaten by an
overwhelming majority. (Hear, hear, and cheers.) It was
evident the hon. and learned gentleman entertained very
strange ideas about concessions. He mentioned a third con-
cession—the lodgerfranchise, totally forgetting they had not
as yet obtained that franchise, and that the Chancellorof the
Exchequer when asked to say on what form he would be wil-
ling to give that franchise, had entirely declined to do so.
But 1 wish to say a word upon the concessions. Thera are
certain questions—and they are very numerous—upon which
the authority of Parliament is so high, and its credit with
the country is so unimpaired, that we may very safely say
that whatever is agreed on one side of the house or the
other, would be accepted by the country. That is not the
case with respect to the subject of Parliamentary Reform.
My belief is, that were the arguments of the hon. gentleman
to prevail, were all the gentlemen on that side of the house
to move in the direction indicated by my hon. friend the
member for Haddingten, and to leave the compound house-
holders in the position proposed by the bill, the only
effect would be to produce out of doors a more vio-
lent reaction, and that no credit which any member
possesses, or at all events no member sitting on this
side may possess with his constituency, would in the
slightest degree avail to recommend such a measure to the
country. When the hon. and learned gentleman says that
the object of my hon. friend's motion is to reject this bill,
and when he naturally upbraids me in the character usually
assigned to the hon. member for Birmingham, of a " bug-
bear" to the country, in the working out of the formal re-
sults which may follow, I do not complain in the slightest
degree of the hon. and learned gentleman on that account. I
should not have complained if he had spoken iu much more
severe terms than those he has used, but certainly I may be
permitted to say, as was said by the hon. member for Old-
ham—" Our desire is not to reject but to improve this bill"
—(hear, hear)—and at the same time to say there are mat-
ters upon which with a view to its improvement we feel it
necessary to insist. If there be one condition by which more
than another, ty which at any rate many of those who sit
near me are, together with myself irrevocably bound, it is
this—that it would be not only an offence against policy,
but it would be an offence against faith, were we to ac-
quiesce in the passing of a measure in respect to which we
entertain nothing less than a conscientious belief that it
would fail as a durable settlement of the question. Conse-
quently I hope the hon. and learned gentleman will see
that there are real barriers in our way, which restrict very
much the liberty of choice that we might possess, in deal-
ing with one of those questions, of which this house is
entirely master, and on which the country has formed so
distinct and decided an opinion. My hon friend the mem-
ber for Oldham said, and I think 'rely justly, that his ob-
ject was to improve the bill ; and it appears to me that my
hon. friend is perfectly justified in the occasion which he
has chosen in endeavouring to effect, at all events, the first
step towards that improvement, namely, by resisting the
insertion of the words, which, as far as I can vouch, will
very greatly deteriorate the bill. The right hon. gentle-
man appears to me to be under a total misapprehension,
both with the effect of the vote at which the house
arrived on the 12th of April, and likewise to the techni-
cal rules that bind the house in a committee upon a
bill. There is no technical rule whatever that could
bind this committee from reversing at any moment it
might think fit any decision that may have been come to at
an earlierstage. But the question is not about the reversing
of the vote. The vote of the morning of the 12th of April
went the length of asserting in its full breadth the princi-
ple which I believe to be sound, true, honest, and best prin-
ciple of the bill, namely, that no artificial barriers shall be
set up by Parliament in the giving the franchise to those
whom Parliament think to be of a class fit to obtain the
franchise. (Hear, hear.) The house declined to say, as I
invited them to say, "We will have no distinction between
rated and non-rated—we will take no cognisance of the
question whether personal rating obtains or not ;" but be-
cause the house has declined at that early stage to prefer
what I grant was a very broad principle, the hon. gentle-
man thinks he has got an affirmation for all the substan-
tive features of the Government proposal relating to per-
sonal rating. But nothing has been decided upon that
point. According to the vete of the committee on the
12th of April, cognisance was promised of personal rating
at the later stages of the bill, if they were to be consistent,
and the hon. member for Oldham grounds his amendment
upon such cognisance—he does not propose a distinct re-
solution for personal rating. lam not going now to dis-
cuss that. proposition, but what my lion. friend proposes,
and that which we are called upon to vote to-night, is,
that, notwithstanding the present law and practice, and
notwithstanding that we have at this moment upon our
registers tons of thousands of men who are never person-
ally rated at all, we are now to be called upon to insert
words in the bill that will alter and reverse our present
legislation, and lay down in a restrictive sense this broad
principle—that no class of men are to-be allowed t., come
upon the register except through personal rating. The
question to-night is whether we shall insert the words
which will introduce into our elective code new restric-
tions which have been abolished ever since the act of Sir
William Clay. (Hear, hear.) In the present condition of
the public mind that is a very great question indeed.
If that question is not very accurately understood
within these walls, I think it is very considerably un-
derstood beyond these walls. (Hear, hear.) And Ido
not wish to be responsible for introducing at
this time of day any restrictive propositions
and principles as to the elective system of the country.
Now, I come to a point in which I confess I am not able to
agree with my hon. friend, who says the proposition of the
Government is a great improvement upon its former pro-
position. To enter into that controversy would be rather
an invidious course. It would be like discussing the ques-
tion between two persons of extremely ill-favoured coun-
tenance, to decide which of them nature had been most
'bountiful to. (Laughter.) It would take some time to ex-
plain exactly the curious variations in the three plans
which the Government have successively laid before us
'for dealing with the compound householders, for, practi-
cally, above three-fourths of the persons about whose en-
etf
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the qualification. When the first of these propositions was
submitted to us, it was comprised within the 34th and
35th clause of the bill, and I contended at the time that
the 34th clause imposed a fine upon the compound house-
holder of £lO. My hon. and learned friend the member
for Sheffield, in guarded and mild language, described my
observations as "a series of pettifogging cavils." (Laugh-
ter.) Another gentleman, a friend of mine, whose lips
have never been opened in this house except to utter words
of mildness--I mean the hon. member for Derby, said,
"As to the fine, it is all nonsense." (A laugh.) My hon.
friend was at the time "among the children of the mist,"
as Sir Walter Scott calls them ; and I do not think, under
such circumstances, we ought to be called too rigidly to
account with regard to the precision of the language. If
we were here for the purpose of indulging in and gratify-
ing criticism, the member for Richmond and myself might
have had some feelings of extraordinary fulness and
breadth of mental luxury-on the extraordinary admis
sion that the pettifogging cavils and the nonsense which
we are supposed to have promulgated expressed the
view of political economy which is now to 133 adopted
by the Government as the basis of their proposition. The
general characteristic of the first resolution was that the
compound householder was to be subjected both to the
labour and uncertainty of claiming to be placed on the
register. The present proposal was that the compound
householder was to recoup himself from his landlord for
the entire sum he might pay in the form of rates; but then
he was to cease to be a compound householder. I may say
that I hold the imposition of a fine is an injury and
a grievance. It is a much greater grievance and a much
more serious burden that this house should take upon itself
to interfere in all the arrangements of landlord and tenant,
according to which arrangements three-fourths of a
borough population, in consequence of the immense con-
venience, have compounded and should make change in
the tenure of their dwelling-houses the condition of their
obtaining the franchise. I do not seek to disguise the
question —the intention might be very well considered if
we were here engaged in endeavouring to censure what
has been done. We are not here for that purpose, but to
consider what is good for the country. And I confess
that, with respect to what is good for the country, the
public mind is sensitive and irritated upon this question;
and I do not think it would be possible to invent a pro-
posal savouring more grievously of class legislation. (Oh,
oh, and hoar, hear.) But there is another difference
between this and the third plan of the Government.
The Government propose to go back upon the worst
condition of the compound householders. Is theta conces-
, sion? Is it to be paraded by the right hon. gentleman as
one of the instances of conciliation from that side which are
to be reflected from this ? I know of no explanation of that
extraordinary stop except this—that they find it necessary
in consequence of the further enlargement of the constituen-
cies, and reducing the two years' residential qualification to
one year, to give a c,orrespon ding concession to the opponents
of enlargement of the franchise. This blow is struck at the
existing privilege. That is really the state of the case;
and Iwill now refer to the answer given by the right hon.
gentleman to me earlier in the evening. I think that'
answer was totally incorrect. The right hon. gentleman
appeared to me to be under misapprehension as to the exist-
ing state of law and fact. • I asked him whether the old
compound householders—that is to say, compound house-
holders above—were to be allowed under the proposal of
the Government to come upon the register, and still to be
allowed to remain compound householders. The right hon.
gentleman goys my words are not clear. I admit they are