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

THE- SUN, LONUON, TUESDAY EVENING, MARCH 19 1867.

bouring classes—(hear, hear)—if you say to them, " You,
by your arrangement with your landlord, have nothing to
do with rates, because you pay them in your rent ; but you
are to go to the parish officer and claim to be rated ; you
are to go to another parish officer, and see whether there are
any rated due on your premises ; and if there are any due,
you are to render the amount; and then you are to be liable
to be told by the parish officer—as these people frequently

are told, and as there is a noted case in one of the metro-
politan boroughs--" and then to be told, now you have
made your claim, and when the revising barrister comes
here in November then you may appear before him in sup-

port of it." (Laughter.) Well, sir, I will tell the right
hon. gentleman, in my opinion the mode he has adopted of

applying the principle of rating is a mode that really can-
not stand. I don't agree with those who think that the
principle of rating is the great bulwark of the constitu-
tion. But I do agree with those who think that if you
proceed to enfranchise all householders—and I don't per-
ceive that the right hon. gentleman has made the smallest
provision to meet the difficulty—l do agree with those who
think that if you enfranchise all householders, you get

,nto very great difficulty at the lower end of the scale

when you come to deal with that class of householder
who is usually excused his rates. (Hear, hear.) You
then put h into the powor of the parish officer, who is a

political partisan, who anticipates that 100 or 500 men
are going to vote on the side opposite to his, to allege
their poverty, and obtain an excuse of their rates
—(hear, hear)--thereby disfranchising the men. There
is a cure for that, when you let in the elec-
tion agent, who, aware of the politics of the
parish officer, and determined not to be behind him,
comes down with 500 rates for his 500 men, in triumph,

and reinstates those bribed and contaminated men.

(Cheers.) I did expect to hear from the right hon. gentle-
man some indication that he had made a provision for
dealing with this class of cases; but, instead of indicating
anything of that kind, the right hon. gentleman wont on
to make disrespectful remarks on a plan not before the
house, namely, a £5 rating, which ho contended bad
never been before the house, but which, unless my me-
mory serves me very ill, was proposed by Lord Russell in
1852, when the right hon. gentleman, speaking on Lord
Russell's bill, spoke of it as based on a Serbonian Bog,
though he spoke of it in terms of general approbation.
He has now indicated most darkly and mysteriously that
some one has got a plan by means of a rating bill to de-
prive all below a .£5 rating of the privilege of paying their
rates, and thus of reducing them to a condition of helotism
which, ho thinks, is perfectly intolerable. The right hon.
gentleman does not appear to be aware of the real history
of the laws which have been passed with reference to per-
sonal liability for rates. It is all very well to say that the
old principlo of the borough franchise was that a man
should pay scot and lot. Now, we have contrived to im-
prove at any rate the detail of our social and economical
arrangements. I take it, in that state of society a very
large number of those who paid scot and lot wore proprie-

tors of their house. But the great mass now, almost the
entirety of the similar population of our towns, are tenants,
and not proprietors. For half a century Parliament bas
been under the conviction that it was much better in the

case of these small holdings and small rates to deal with

the landlords, and not with the tenants. lam addressing
myself to the observations of the right hon. gentlema❑
when he clothed with a kind of mysterious horror that

somebody proposed that occupiers below £5 might be re-
lieved from liability with respect of rates. But is this the
view Parliament takes of this principle of the British Con-
stitution, ehat every man should pay his rates ? Parlia-
ment says this in the Small Tenements Act : " Whereas
the collection of poor's rates and highway rates assessed
upon the occupiers of tenements of small annual value is
expensive, difficult, and frequently impracticable, and it is
expedient to make provision for the better collection of the
same, therefore be it enacted that the owner shall be rated,
Ste." This is the great social reform which the right hon.
gentleman seems to view with horror and dislike, and which
he actually treats as if the application of it to the small
householders of the country was in the nature of a public
wrong. (Hear, hear.) I must own Iso far agree with gen-
tlemen who feel great interest in this subject of personal
rating, that I should regard it as a fortunate circumstance
if the limit of our franchise downward were to cease at
the same point of personal liability to pay rates. I think
there would be some very great advantages in that
arrangement. (Hear, hear.) I don't say that it is prac-
tical, but I say there are advantages. First, I believe it is
entirely owing to a defect in the amount of allowance pro-
posed that the Small Tenements Act does not run much
more generally through the boroughs. Secondly, if we
are all sincere—as I hope we are, and as I believe we are—
in desiring to get something like fixity on this question—
(hear, hear)—it seems that such an arrangement would
greatly contribute to fixity; but this is the very arrange-
ment which the right hon. gentleman gratuitously selected
for his severest condemnation. 1 must ask myself, with
regard to this bill, two questions—first, what the bill is,
and secondly, what the bill would become if we pass into
committee. In the first place, I find in committee there
are three safeguards or securities intended by the bill.
The first relates to residence, the second to rating, and the
third to dual voting. That phrase which the right hon.
gentleman seemed to me with an " unerring instinct"—
(laughter)—to eschew as long as ever be could, and at last
to pass over with a lightness and delicacy of touch for
which I shall be forced to substitute very much coarser
language. Let me look at the securities ; first of all comes
length of residence. The right hon. gentleman does not
here adopt the terms of the Municipal Act, but an inter-
mediate term, and he adds to that substantially the term
now required by the Parliamentary Registration Act. I
cannot say for myself that I attach the smallest value to
that provision. It will operate in reducing the franchise
to people of property. lam quite willing to admit it is
considered a valuable admission that will operate to reduce
the franchise of the upper classes, but not quite so much
as the lower. 1 presume it is to apply to all ; or is there
to be one above £lO and one below ? (Oh, oh.)
The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER-It is the
same as the proposal of Lord John Russell's bill. It leaves
all existing franchises. The franchises under the Act of
1832 are not touched.
Mr. GLADSTONE—That is the right way to do it, if
it is to be done. I think you aro right to preserve exist-
ing rights ; but I must say I think it has the effect of limit-
ing the existing franchises, if not some of the upper as well
as the lower classes of electors. Does not the longer term
of residence limit the number of the electors ? (No, no.)
However, I won't trouble the house more about that, be-
cause, as I was going to say, I only wish to that extent to
enter a protest; but where there may be much more sub-
stantial and difficult matters, I do not pretend to say that
that is one of great consequence, or a matter on which there
are any great and vital questions depending. I now come
to the question of personal rating, and I must say that it
appears to me that the proposition of the right hon. gen-
tleman is fundamentally and essentially wrong. (Hear,
hear.) I can understand that you might remedy in a cer-
tain sense the evils of that proposition by alterations which
would completely nullify it. If you provide that the
416,000 names of compound householders—l include those
who occupy under the Small Tenements Act, although 1
believe that is not perfectly correct in law—are to remain
on the register, it would be better to get rid of the rate-
paying distinction altogether. There is no advantage in
adopting a circuitous process for its own sake. But I wish
now to point out what I think a fundamental and incurable
fault in the proposition of the right hon. gentleman, sup-
posing it is intended to be a reality. If it is intended to be
merely a dream, the question must be considered from a
different point of view ; but supposing it to be intended to
be a reality, its effect is this: —We find existing in this
country laws and practices of many different descriptions,
which have the effect in different modes of limiting the
principle of personal liability to rating. The first of these
modes is by the adoption of the Small Tenements Act,
where the ratepayers of a parish, voting with a very high
Plurality of votes—(hear, hear)—can, if they think fit,
bring in the Act, and disfranchise every man who, but for
its introduction, would enjoy the franchise in a direct
manner. (Hear, hear.) lam now going to assume that the
right hon. gentleman's distinction between rating and
non-rating is a reality. Then, the first effect of the in-
troduction of that act is to remove from the register every
man who is registered under £6. I will apply that to the
borough of Leeds—a very favourite case for the plan of the
right hon. gentleman—because I believe it will not be pos-
sible to bring forward any Reform Bill that shall not add
considerably to the constituency of that borough. Upon
that I congratulate my hon. friend near me (Mr. Baines).
There aro in that borough 14,600 ratepayers who aro as-
sessed at £6 and under. Can it be right that it shall de-
pend upon the will of the vestry—aye, and not of the ves-
try considered as to population, but I say upon the will
exclusively of the propertied classes of the parish—whether
those 14,600 people are to be enfranchised or not? (Hear.)
Then, again, after the Small Tenements Act has been
adopted, it is in the power of the vestry to reject and put
an end to it, and is that the sort of thing to form the basis
of our legislation? In fact, are we to pass a law with re-
spect to which we are wholly in the dark, as to whether it
will double the constituency or only add some 100,000, or
120,000, or 130,000 people, and under which it will depend
on the will of local persons, with local interests, and upon
local officers, whether or not household suffrage should bo
established in the land. (Hoar, hear.) I protest against that
method of proceeding. (Cheers.) If household suffrage is
to be established by the House of Commons, let it bo esta-
blished; but don't let us leave it to the wealthier persons in
each constituency to enfranchise or disenfranchise at their
pleasure, and with reference to circumstances which any
of them may choose to import into it, the decision of the
cases of thousands of their fellow-subjects. (Hear.) That
is one class of persons, and the most important class of per-
sons affected by the provisions of the bill. Again, 1 corn
back to my point. Is your distinction between rating and
non-rating to be a reality or not ? If it is not to be a rea-
lity, say so—do away with the distinction, and let us get
rid of this unnecessary restriction upon the operation of
the constitution ; but if it is to be a reality, don't let us
leave it to depend upon the more will of local authori-
ties to define what the limits of the constituencies are to be.
(Hear, hear.) There are two other classes—most important
Iclasses. There is a class of towns where special local acts
have been obtained, and where the Small Tenements Act
is unknown, but where these local acts establish tho prin-
ciple of corppouncliug.for rates upon a yory WO scale. The