The Sun.
London, England, 1867-03-19 00:00:00

right hon. gentleman is aware that local acts are to be
found establishing compositions for rates on the assessment

of the landlord up to £lO, £l2, £l5, £2O, £3O value; and
even in certain cases, in London particularly, up to £35
value. I asked the right hon. gentleman whether a com-
pound householder paying 20s. a year in direct taxes is to
be permitted to enjoy the second vote—the voto for direct

taxation. He said "Yes," and certainly it would be most
absurd that he should not, presuming that the direct tax

vote is to be law of the land. But what can be more absurd

than this, that recognising his fitness to be made one of
the special class who are to be elected, as it were, the

keepers of the rest of the community, by means of this
second vote he is put in a position of difficulty in respect to
his household vote, as compared with the man rated at £3
or .£4 in a town where there do not happen to be com-
pound householders? There is not a man in this house
with a more lively fancy than the right hon. gentleman. Is

it possible even for the house to conceive anything more
ludicrous than this ? I will take the borough of Thetford,

where the bill of the right hen. gentleman would go very
close, indeed, to establishing universal suffrage. This is
just like a great number of boroughs which the right hon.
gentleman is often glad to use to do service in his compa-
risons between county and borough representation. It is
a mere assemblage of villages constituting a rural district.
There is a population of 4,200 peop;e, and there are 829

male occupiers—that is ono in five—very close upon uni-
versal suffrage. If you will carry that proportion through
England, it will give you a constituency of 4,000,000 ;
and I imagine that will entirely close the mouth of Mr.
Beales. (Hear, hear, and cheers.) These people are the mare
peasantry of the country—l mean those who represent un-
skilled labour—(no, no)—unskilled labour. I don't mean
skilled agricultural labourers—though they are increasing
in number, and as the use of agricultural machinery be-

comes more common they must increase ; but in the suf-
frage, as far as the borough of Thetford is concerned, they
aro unskilled. We may take Wilton and Westbury as
similar examples. If you choss to go into those groups
and clusters of villages—as rural as any in the country—
and emancipate the whole, you will hays—l don't say in
committee on this bill, but at an early period—to consider
whether this peasantry in other districts are to be intro-

duced also, and whether that application is to be universal
to the rural and village population. lam not one of those
who believe that the constitution of the country is depen-

dent upon the suffrage, as Lord Derby declared the other
night when he spoke of the destruction of the British con-
stitution. I have a great deal more faith in the constitu-
tion than to believe it depends on a rating franchise, or
even upon exact wisdom. (Hear, hear.) We might make
many serious mistakes, and the strung good sense of this
country would save the constitution. (Hear, hear.) But
that is no reason why we should make mistakes, and estab-
lish now principles in the dark, as the right hon. gentle-

man said the House of Commons did on the motion of the
noble lord the member for Galway. Before I could accede
to a franchise which is close upon universal suffrage
which is, as I understand, equivalent in the rural districts,
where the Small Tenements Act is not in operation, to re-
sidential manhood suffrage —I should like to ask myself
whether, with a view to the maintanance of th a diversity of
character in the house of Commons of which the right hon.
gentleman speaks with great good sen se,l am prepared to en-
dure the application of the principle to the whole county
constituency of the country. There are, then, these local
Acts to which I have referred, and nothing could be more
preposterous than you should say to the peasant, or the com-
mon hod man, or day labourer earning is 6d or 2s a day, "You
shall have the franchise for nothing; your name shall be
placed on the register, and you know nothing about it ;"
and that you should go into the great communities of tht
parishes and boroughs of London, and many other towns,
and actually fine, in time, or in money, or in both the com-
pound householder—the man whose perfect competency it
is proposed to recognise by putting into his hands the

second vote. (Hear, hear.) The second of these safeguards
is doomed. It may be perfectly possible to make a personal
rating a condition of the suffrage ; but the right hon. gen-
tleman has condemned the plan on which it could be
done. But personal rating, as a condition of the
suffrage—the amount of the rating in the country being
regulated partly by pure accident, and the rest either by
the will of the local parochial authorities or by the activity
of political agents, and their literal use of the purses of the
candidates—such provisions as these will not be allowed
by the House of Commons to enter into any bill for the
amendment of the representation of the people. (Cheers.)
Then comes the duality of votes. And hero the right hon.
gentlemen has made a moderate computation. He did not
venture on a higher figure than 200,000, though he
left a broad margin beyond that. The right hon. gentle-
man knows very well that there must be more than
200,000 of those dual votes. And here I have to make a
complaint against her Majesty's Government. Last year
we laboured to the utmost of our ability, and spent hours,
and days, and many of them, with the best aids wo could
get, in preparing and throwing into the best form, for
the use of the House of Commons, the best information
our opportunities would enable us to get. And yet we
were proposing the most homely of measures, such as
might easily occur to any person without digging beneath
the surface, and elaborating refined and philosophical
systems like that of the right hon. gentleman. And now
he comes forward with the proposal relating to dual
voting, of all new-fangled schemes the most now-fangled,
and of all innovations the most innovating —(hear, hear)
—and yet he does not deign to lay upon the table any
computation of tho number of those dual votes that are to
be created, and are tc be put up as arms in the hands of
one part of the community to be used against another.
(Opposition cheers.) The right hon. gentleman does not
deign to supply us with such information—though he has
been so long thinking about it—ever since Lord Derby in
August last wrote to him that this question must be set-
tled, and not with a niggard hand, he has not given us a
scrap of information, except the statement that the num-
ber of dual votes must be beyond 200,000. How much
beyond? (Hear, hear.) Is it 300,000, 400,000, or 500,000 ?
There is no reply. (Cheers and laughter.) I am bound to
say that I do not super so much from the want of a reply
to that question as might be supposed. To this dual voting
of the right hon. gentleman, be the numbers great orsmall,
from this moment I for ono record an inflexible hostility.
(Opposition cheers.) We have observed long enough the
language of reserve—(cheers and laughter)—and I would
gladly observe it still, if the proposition of the Govern-
ment were such as to make it compatible with the fulfil-
ment of public obligations. But I have enough faith in the
British spirit of honour, even of those gentlemen who gave
me a sarcastic cheer just now, to believe that I should ill
indeed study the mode of obtaining access to their good
graces if, entertaining the opinion I do of this proposition,
I spoke of it in less unmeasured terms. This dual vote is in
the first place a gigantic engine of fraud that nothing can
control. 1 believe the right hon. gentleman might in
some degree have avoided this pitfall if he had taken the
pains to confine the dual vote to the house tax. If he had
done that we should still be liable to this difficulty, that
many persons to serve a political candidate won ld get the
owners ;,of houses whose houses were less than £2O to
pay the house tax. But this might have been limited
to a considerable extent by providing that all the other
rates and taxes to which the man was liable should
be paid on the same scale. But when the right
hon. gentleman comes to the income tax and assessed
taxes, it is equivalent to proclaiming to every man in the
country, with a purse in his pocket, that he may make
votes on what scale he pleases for 20s. a year. (Cheers.)
A man who chooses to use hair powder must pay 235. 6d.
a year. A man who chooses to hand about, not the body
but the property of some miserable three-legged jade, may,
if he pleases, qualify 365 persons by changing day by day
the ownership of a single horse that cost him perhaps £3
(Loud laughter.) Then there is the income tax. In a
borough where 100 votes are wanted, a political agent
may make 100 men sign a requisition to the surveyor of
taxes, saying they were not assessed for income tax, and
asking for the proper papers. The surveyor has no option,
for I presume you are not going to put upon him the duty
of ascertaining whether the persons ought to be assessed,
though that would be quite as reasonable as some of the
right hon. gentleman's propositions. (Laughter.) At any
rate, it is not included in his present bill. The 100 papers
go to the political agent, and he fills them up—say he
writes under Schedule D, " Turkish Guaranteed Stock"—
(laughter)—he takes them round and they are signed, and
the operation is complete. Thus votes are made by these
false schedule; and it is impossible to prevent wholesale
fraud in the use of the tax. But perhaps the right
hon. gentleman will say—he is merciless in making
the past errors of other men do duty for hie pre-
sent purposes—that in 1854 we proposed some such plan.
That is quite true, and that was proposed on account of
the plausible appearance which they bore in our eyes,
and which they still bear in the eyes of the right hon.
gentleman, and he will not suppose that I moan to say
he wishes deliberately to bring about a great system of
fraud. But when we had contemplated these measures,
and saw what they would come to, we did not propose
them in 1860 or 1866. (Hoar, hear.) And having thus deli-
berately rejected them, it is no wonder that we should be
ready to criticise them when they appear in the bill of the
right hon. gentleman. And besides being a gigantic engine
of frauds, this dual vote is a great deal more. It is a pro-
clamation of a war of classes—(Opposition choers)—it is
the first measure in the war of classes. Talk of the Bri-
tish constitution—the author of this dual vote is the man
who strikes at the British constitution ! (Cheers.) The
British constitution rests, and has rested from time home-
morial upon the mutual goodwill, respect, and good feeling
of the people; upon the equality which they enjoyed in
the eye of the law; upon the manner in which they met
in their public assemblages, reckoned as men and citi-
zens, and enjoying equal privileges hi that capacity.
But the day when :you place in the hands of the rich
man, under the notion of fortifying his position, this
weapon to use against his poorer follow-countryman,
that day you seal the doom of the old British constitution
—(cheers)—that day you sow seeds of dissension that can
never abate—that day you destroy the confidence that
unites all classes of the community. (Re-
newed cheering.) If you could promulgate this mea-
pure to-morrow as an Act of Parliament in the
terms of the bill the right honourable gentleman now
holds in his hands, you would light up a flame the most
dangqoUo ttncl feri*clablo that has ever menaced the