The Sun.
London, England, 1867-03-20 00:00:00

THE SUN LONDON, WEDNESDAY EvENING, MARCH 20 1867.

with the consent of the person or corporation having
the control over the same, be used for the purpose
of taking the poll at such place.

" ELECTION IN UNIVERSITY OF LONDON.

" 25. The Vice-Chancellor of the University of
London shall be the returning officer for such uni-
versity, and the writ for any election of a member
to serve in Parliament for such university shall be
directed to such vice-chancellor.

" 26. The Vice-Chancellor of the University of
London shall proceed to election in pursuance of any
writ to be directed to him, as hereinbefore mentioned,
within six days after the receipt of such writ, giving
three clear days' notice of the day and place of elec-
tion, exclusive of the day of proclamation and the
day of election, and the vice-chancellor shall, after
such election, certify the same, together with such
writ, according to the directions thereof.
" 27. At every contested election of a member or
members to serve in Parliament for the University
of London the polling shall commence at eight
o'clock in the morning of the day next following the
day fixed for the election, and may continue for not
more than three days, Sunday, Christmas Day, and
Good Friday being excluded, but no poll shall be
kept open later than four o'clock in the afternoon.
" 28. At every election of a member to serve in
Parliament for the U niversity of London the Vice-
Chancellor shall appoint the polling place, and also
shall have power to appoint two or more pro-vice-
chancellors, any one of whom may receive the vote
and decide upon all questions during the absence of
such vice-chancellor ; and such vice-chancellor shall
have power to appoint poll-clerks and other officers,
by one or more of whom the votes may be entered
iu the poll-book or number of poll-books as may be
judged necessary by such vice-chancellor ; and suc h
vice-chancellor shall, not later than two o'clock in
the afternoon of the day next following the close of
the poll, openly declare the state of the poll and
make proclamation of the member chosen.

" VOTING PAPERS.

" 29. Any elector may give his vote by a voting
paper in the same manner and subject to the same
conditions in and subject to which an elector of any
of the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, or Dublin
may give his vote, and all the provisions of the act
of the session of the 24th and 25th years of the
reign of her present Majesty, cap. 53, shall, with
the requisite variations, apply accordingly; and in
construing the said act the returning officer' shall
be substituted for the Vice-Chancellor of the Uni-
versity,' and the expression University' shall be
taken to mean the county or borough for which the
elector votes.

" MISCELLANEOUS.
" 30. In any borough named in Schedules (B)
and (C) to this act annexed, which is or includes a
municipal borough, the mayor of such municipal
borough shall be tha returning officer, and in the
other cases the returning officer shall be appointed

n the same manner as if such places were included

amongst the boroughs mentioned in Schedules (C

and (D) of the act of the second year of his late
Majesty William the Fourth, chapter 45, for which
no persons are mentioned in such schedules as re-
turning officers.
" 31. The following persons, that is to say,
shall be appointed boundary commissioners
for England and Wales, and they shall, immediately

after the passing of this act, name special assistant
commissioners, who shall examine the boundaries of

the boroughs constituted by this act (including the
divisions of the borough of the Tower Hamlets), and
of every other borough in England and Wales. The
assistant-commissioners, so appointed shall give
notice, by public advertisement, of their intention
to visit such boroughs, and shall appoint a time for
receiving the statements of any persons who may
be desirous of giving information as to the boun-
daries or other local circumstances of such boroughs,
and shall, by personal inspection and such other
means as they shall think necessary, possess
themselves of such information as will enable
them to make such report and recommendation as
hereinafter mentioned. Upon the completion of

such examination by the said assistant- commis-
sioners, the Inclosure Commissioners shall report to
one of her Majesty's Principal Secretaries of State
whether any enlargement of the boundaries of such
boroughs is necessary in order to include within the
area thereof the population properly belonging to
such boroughs respectively, and in such report shall
propose such new boundaries (if any) as in their
judgment would effect that object, but such report
shall be of no validity until it has been confirmed
by Parliament.
" 32. Every person claiming to vote in respect
of any franchise conferred by th.Fs Act, other than
one involving occupation of premises and payment
of rates, shall vote at the booth at which he would
vote if he were registered as a voter in respect of
the house in which he resides.

" 33. There shall be repealed so much of the
seventy-ninth section of the act of the reign of her
present Majesty, chapter 18, as relates to the resi-
dence of voters at the time at which they give their
votes.

" 34. 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 franchise in the same manner and subject to the
same conditions in and subject to which an occupier
may claim to be registered under the existing Acts
of Parliament for the purpose of acquiring the fran-
chise in respect of the occupation of premises of a
clear yearly value of not less than ten pounds, and
all the provisions of the said acts shall apply ac-
cordingly; provided that the rates to be paid by
such occupier in order to entitle him to the fran-
chise shall be rates calculated on the full rateable
value of the premises.
" 35. Where any occupier of a dwelling house
in respect of which the owner is rated instead of
the occupier at the time of the passing of this
act would be entitled to be registered, in pur-
suance of this act, at
,•the first registration of
parliamentary voters to be made after the pass-
ing of this act, if he had paid rates for the re-
quired period, such occupier shall, notwithstand-
ing he may not have paid such rates, be en-
titled to be registered, subject to the follow-
ing conditions .-1. That he makes a claim to be
rated in manner in which such claims are required
by the existing law to be made, within one
month after the passing of this act : 2. That he
pays all rates due in respect of such house at
the time of making his claim, and further pays all
rates becoming due in respect of such house between
the date of his claim being made and the date of his
name being placed on the register of Parliamen-
tary voters, such last. mentioned rates to be cal-
culated on the full rateable value of the premises.
u 36. Any candidate or other person, either
directly or indirectly, corruptly paying any rate
on behalf of any voter, or for the purpose of in-
ducing him to vote, shall be guilty of bribery,
and be punishable accordingly ; and any person on
whose behalf and with whose privity any such
payment is made shall also be guilty of bribery,
and punishable accordingly.
" 37. Whereas by the act of the 6th year of
the reign of Queen Anne, chap. 7, all persons ap-
pointed to offices of profit under the Crown, and
thereafter duly elected as members of the House
of Commons are required to vacate their seats
upon their acceptance of any othdr office of profit
under the Crown, and it is expedient to alter the
laws in this respect : be it therefore enacted, that
if any person appointed to any office of profit
under the Crown, and thereafter duly returned as
a member of the house of Commons, accepts,
while he continues to be such member, any other
office of profit under the Crown (except an office
which by law incapacitates the holder thereof from
being elected or from voting in Parliament), the
acceptance of such other office shall not render the
election of such person void, nor shall any writ
thereupon k.sue for a new election.
u 38. Where separate registers of voters have
been directed to be made in any county or borough
divided by this act, if a vacancy takes place in the
representation of the said county or borough before
the summoning of a future P ornament, and after
the completion of such separate registers, such last
' mentioned registers shall, for the purpose of any
election to fill up such vacancy, be deemed together
to form the register for the county or borough.
" 39. Nothing in this act contajned shall affect

the rights of persons whose names are for the time
being on the register of voter 3 for any county in
which the boroughs constituted by this act are situate
to vote in any election for such county in respect
of any vacancy that may take place before the sum-
moning of a future Parliament, but after such
summoning no person shall be entitled to be regis-
tered as a voter or to vote in any election for any
such county who would not be entitled to be so re-
gistered, or to vote in case the boroughs constituted
by this act were before the passing of this act
boroughs returning members to Parliament.
" 40. The franchises conferred by this act shall
be in addition to and not in substitution for any
existing franchises ; and, subject to the provisions
of this act, all laws, customs, and enactments now
in force conferring any right to vote or otherwise
relating to the representation of the people in Eng-
land and Wales shall remain in full force, and shall
apply, as nearly as circumstances admit, to any
constituency hereby authorised to return a member
or members to Parliament as if it had heretofore
returned such members to Parliament.
" 41. All writs to be issued for the election of
members to serve in Parliament, and all mandates,
precepts, instruments, proceedings, and notices con-
sequent upon such writs, shall be framed and ex-
pressed in such manner and form as may be neces-
sary for the carrying the provisions of this act into
effect.

" 42. This act, so far as is consistent with the
tenour thereof, shall be construed as one with the
enactments for the time being in force relating to
the representation of the people.
" 43. The following terms shall in this act have
the meanings hereinafter assigned to them, unless
there is something in the context repugnant to such
construction ; that is to say—' month' shall mean
calendar month ; member' shall include a knight
of the shire; election' shall mean an elec-
tion of a member or members to serve in
Parliament ; ' county' shall not include a county of
a city or county of a town, but shall mean any
county, riding parts or division of a county return-
ing a member or members to serve in Parliament ;
borough' shall mean any borough, city, place, or
combination of places, not being a county as here-
inbefore defined, returning a member or members to
serve in Parliament ; The Registration Acts' shall
mean the Act of the 6th year of the reign of her
present Majesty, cap. 18, and the Act of the 28th
year of the reign of her present Majesty, cap. 36,
and any other Act or parts of Acts relating to the
registration of persons entitled to vote at and pro-
ceedings in the election of members to serve in Par-
liament for England and Wales."
SCHEDULES.
SCHEDULE (A).
Boroughs to return one member only iu future Parliaments

Houiton, Thetford, Wells. Eveshatu, Marlborough, Har-
wich, Richmond, LyiningtOn, Knaxesborough, Andover,
Leominster, Tewkesbury, Ludlow, Ripon, Huntingdon,
Maldou, Cirencester, Bodmin, Great Marlow, Devizes,
Hertford, Dorchester, and Lichfield.
SCHEDULE (B).

Places to be Boroughs to return Ono Member each.

Torquay.—Parishes of Tor Mohun, St. Mary Church
Cockington, Poiguton.
Darlingtou.—Townships of Darlington, Haughton-lo-
Skorne, Cockerton.
Hartlepool. Municipal borough of Hartlepool, town-
ships of Throston, Stranton, Seaton Carew.

dravesend.—Patishe sof Gravesend, Milton, Northfleet
St. Helen's—Townships of Sutton and Pair, portions of
townships of Eceleston and Windlo.

Burnley.—Townships of Burnloy, Habergham Eaves.
Staleybridge.—Municipal borough of Staleybridgo, re-
maining portion of township of Dukinfield, township 01
Staley, the district of the Local Board of Health of Iloss
Wednesbury.—Parishos of Wednesbury West Brom-
wich, Tipton.

Croydon.—Parish of Croydon Hamlet of Penge.

Middlesborough.—Township of Linthorpo, and so much
of the townships of Mid ilesborougb, Ormsby and Eston,
as lie to the north of the road leading from Eston towards
Yarm.

Dowsbury.—The townships of Dewsbury, Batley Sool
hill.

Barnsley.—The townships of Barnsley, Worsborougli
Dodworth, Barugh, Monk Bretton, Ardsley.
SCHEDULE (C).
Divisions of Borough or Tower Hamlets.

Northern Division—The parish of hackney; the parish
of St. Matthew, Bethnal-green ; the parish- of West Ham;
the parish of St. Leonard, Shoreditch.
Southern Division—The parish of St. George's-in-the-
East; the hamlet of Mile-end Old Town; the union of
parishes of Poplar; the union of parishes of Stepney ; the
union of parishes of Whitochapol ; the Liberty of the
Tower of London.

with two members the population of which, by the
census of 1861, was below 10,000 ; and that the
seats thus taken, together with those obtained by
the disfrancisement of any existing boroughs, should,
after providing one seat apiece for the proposed 13
new constituencies, be allotted as third seats to the
largest boroughs and counties now having two mem-
bers ; and that in these, and also in the eight con-
stituencies now represented by three members, every
elector should be at liberty to distribute or accumu-
late his votes, at his own discretion."
Mr. Pease will move, " That the municipal
borough of Hartlepool, the township of Hart, the
township of Throston, and the parish of Stranton
shall constitute the borough of the Hartlepools.
That one member be given to the borough of Stock-
ton, and that the said Parliamentary borough do
consist of the municipal borough of Stockton-upon-
Tees, the parish of Norton, and the parish of
Thornaby."

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—The text of the Reform Bill of 1867 is

at length before us. The Ministers of the Crown
hesitated as long as possible to commit themselves

to any particular plan of Reform, but the patience
of the House of Commons has its limits, _ and the

time had at last come when the honour of Parlia-
ment demanded the production of a definite scheme.
A. bill has accordingly been presented to the house.
Not, indeed, that this can be looked upon as final.
If we were compelled to regard it as the ultimatum
of the Ministry, we should despair of any solution of
the Reform question in the present year. But the
previous experience of the session, not to speak of
the language of the Chancellor of the Exchequer
yesterday afternoon, warns us not to be dis-
couraged. The bill which has been laid upon the
table is a formal sketch of a complete measure,
but as some of its leading features have been
already repudiated by all sections of the house,
it cannot be deemed anything more. The ques-
tion for the rest of the week is, _ therefore, not

•
whether the measure propounded can be ac-
cepted as a whole, but whether it is capable of such
manipulation—by omitting provisions here, and in-
serting others elsewhere—so as to offer at last a sa-
tisfactory solution of a problem which the House of
Commons itself must take in hand. The bill opens
with a definition of the occupation franchise in

boroughs. It is proposed that the occupier of any
dwelling-house shall have a vote after an occupation
of two years during which he has been rated to the
poor and paid his rates. At first sight this appears
to promise a considerable enfranchisement. Some
exception may be taken to the length of residence
required, but we do not regard this objection as
substantial. The payment of rates is, in itself, no
more than an evidence of that personal responsi-
bility which justifies the household franchise to the
minds of persons so widely separated from each
other as Mr. Henley and Mr. Bright. As a matter
of fact, however, experience has proved that the
personal responsibility of the lowest rank of house-
holders is unreal, and in order to secure the due
payment of rates it has been found necessary in
many cases to make them a charge upon the owner
instead of the occupier. The occupier, of course,
pays the rate in the form of increased rental, but
the owner is primarily liable to the demands of the
overseer. Before the Reform Act of 1E32 the bur-

den of poor rates was in several boroughs thrown
upon the owner by local acts, and it was accord-
ingly necessary in enfranchising the £lO house-
holders to provide that, where the owner had been
made previously liable, the occupier should be at
liberty to claim to be rated and to pay his rates,
without prejudice, however, to the right of the over-
seers against the owner in case of the occupier's de-
fault. The Small Tenements Act of 1850 em-
powers the vestry in any borough to make the
liability to pay rates in respect of houses rated
at and under £6 a charge on the owner, and
it follows that wherever this act is adopted the
enfranchisement proposed by the first part of
the present bill would cease at the £6 rating
limit. Below that line personal payment of rates
would cease, and, therefore, the privilege of the fran-
chise. It would, however, be plainly intolerable that
the right of these householders to votes should depend
upon the decision of a local body. The 34th clause of
the bill therefore provides that any occupier may
claim to be rated in order to acquire the franchise,
following in this respect the analogous provision of
the Reform Act of 1832. The result would be that
just as all £lO occupiers paying their rates vote at
present, and where a local Act throws the obligation
of. rates on the owner, the occupier may claim to be
substituted as the ratepayer in order to get his vote,
so the bill of the Government would make all house-
holders, resident and paying their rates, voters, and
where, under the operation of the Small Tenements
Act, the owner was made the ratepayer, wzuld en-
able the occupier to claim to be substituted as the
ratepayer, and thus again obtain his vote. At the
first blush the bill of the Government would give a
household suffrage as simply as the Act of 1832
gave a £lO rental suffrage. It is said that practi-
cally the householder rated at £6 and under would
experience such difficulty in establishing his claim
to be put on the Register that he would cease to
prosecute it, and the result of the Ministerial pro-
posals would be a £6 rating franchise where the
Small Tenements Act was adopted, and a household
suffrage elsewhere. If this be true, the proper
means of amending the bill would not be found
in abolishing the necessity of the ratepaying quali-
fication. Personal responsibility should still be
essential in the voter, and it might be secured by
reducing the limit of the Small Tenements Act, and
making its operations universal. It is certain that
the personal payment of rates is a valuable se-
curity for the " steadiness" Mr. Henley looks upon
as the best criterion of fitness for the franchise,
and by making the limit of the franchise coincident
with the limit of rating a vast interest would be en-
listed in maintaining unaltered the franchise quali-
fication. We have dwelt upon the occupation fran-
chise in boroughs, because upon it the fate of the
Bill turns. The Government, if they are wise, will
make only the faintest resistance, if any, to a re-
duction of the occupation franchise in counties ;
and, on the other hand, the educational franchise
will meet with no more serious obstacles than Mr.
Beresford Hope's rambling criticism. The fran-
chise in respect of the possession of £5O in the
savings banks or the public funds for two years is
open to little objection, but it is evident after Mr.
Gladstone's criticism on Monday evening that the
taxpaying franchise must be reconsidered. We
need not dwell upon the dual vote, which will cer-
tainly be abandoned. No doubt could exist upon
this point after the debate on Monday, and Mr.
Disraeli's reply to Mr. Bright last night was suffi-
ciently significant. The fact that the Government
embodied dual voting in their bill must, however,
always be remembered as an irreversible condemna-
tion of their political sagacity. They were warned
against the proposal from every quarter, and when,
in spite of reiterated ivarnings, they submitted it to
the House of Commons, it was condemned from
every bench. The clauses of the bill relating to
the distribution of seats are so palpably faulty and
insufficient that we cannot believe Parliament will
.accept them as any solution of what is, in fact, the
very essence of the Reform question. The House
of Commons will hesitate before it commits itself
to the hypocrisy of disfranchising Great Yarmouth
and Lancaster, and the proposal to restrict the
further distribution of seats to the taking of a
single member from twenty-three boroughs
now returning two members each, and having
a poisulatiou below 7,000, can only be meant
as a pretext for deferring distribution to
another season, and thus keeping the Reform
question unsettled. It is incumbent upon Par-
liament, if for no other purpose than to vindicate
its own sincerity, to force a bolder policy upon the
Government. The proposal to multiply polling-
places so that there shall be one in every place where
there are 200 resident electors, and to throw the ex-
pense of such polling places upon the county rates,
is a step in the right direction which merits hearty
support. The clause authorising the use of voting-
papers in all cases is, in principle, equally excellent,
but it is not easy to see how the practical difficulties
of securing the attestation of voting papers are to
be overcome in the case of a large constituency, and
some such security must clearly be necessary. The
Enclosure Commissioners are to appoint assistant-
commissioners to examine the boundaries of the
existing boroughs, and to determine the boundaries
of the boroughs proposed to be created, and their
reports will be subir itted to Parliament for confirma-
tion. The clause defining their powers is carefully
drawn, so as to limit them to the question whether
it is necessary to " enlarge" existing boundaries,
but it is' at least open to doubt whether the limits of
those boroughs which in fact comprise agricultural
districts should not be contracted. It is characteristic
of the hurry in which the bill has been framed that
one important provision has never been mentioned
by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in any of his
speeches. It is suggested that a member holding
an office of profit under the Crown should not vacate
his seat on the acceptance of another office. We
do not anticipate much objection to this proposal,
but before making the alteration it is worth while
to inquire whether the reason which requires a
member to vacate his seat at all on accepting office
is any longer valid. The question may, however,
too probably, never come ou for discussion, in con-
sequence of the breaking up of the Ministry and
abandonment of the Bill. We have before us, as
we have said, nothing but the sketch of a measure,
which must undergo great alterations to make it