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

technical words, and that I was not speaking with legal
precision. The right hon. gentleman said that the com-
pound householder would not lose any of the privileges that
properly belonged to him under Sir William Clay's Act ;
but the bill in its operation and effects upon the compound
householder would deprive him of his present privileges.
He was, by the bill, to claim to be rated personally, and the
owner of the house was to be released from all liability.
The equality between the voter above £lO and the voter'
below £lO was gone, so that they were going back instead
of going forward. The right hon. gentleman, I think, did
not perceive the seriousness of what he proposed in rela-
tion to the compound householders above and below £lO.
The right hon. gentleman had made a liberal admission
when ho said the compound householder paid in form of
rent to his landlord the whole rate, and he says that I, too,
entertained and expressed that opinion. Now that is a
proposition, as far as my memory serves me, that I have
never asserted. The question was one which bad been
considered by a court of law. An hon. gentleman said,
" The compound householder has taken the necessary
means to pay the rate by paying it in the rent." To
pay it in the rent was the form most convenient to
him, but by this bill be would be required to pay it in a
form the least convenient. He (Mr. Gladstone) con-
tended that it was not for Parliament to erect a flimsy
barrier between man and man under the plea of settingup
securities. All over the surface of the country a vigorous
expression of opinion had been given on this subject. In
every great town there had been manifestations of public
feeling on it during the last four weeks. There was not one
of those towns, including Sheffield, where this arrangement
for the compound householder had not been indignantly
resisted. The hon. member for Oldham was in favour of
sweeping away all existing acts for compounding; but the
Small Tenements Act, which had heed in operation for 20
years, had been voluntarily accepted by 5,000 parishes. This
was a strong evidence of public confidence in the measure.
If the Small Tenements Act were repeated what would be
the result except to introduce that pure and simple house-
hold suffrage which the right hon. gentleman (Mr. Disraeli)
said could not be tolerated. It was impossible for the house
to make the repeal of this and similar enactments a practi-
cal part of their present deliberations. It was convenient
for landlords and compound householders those acts should
be maintained. Nothing could be more convenient than
that a man dependent on weekly wages should be enabled
weekly to dispose of every charge made on him. There was
by this arrangement an economy of -labour, which was as
valuable as an economy of money. (Hear, hear.) It was a
great advantage to him to have the payment of rates in-
cluded in the rent. It would be very difficult for the work-
ing man to save up those small sums and pay them all at
once. The working man could not always keep money in
hand to meet the demands of the tax collector. (Hear.)
He (Mr. Gladstone) would now give his view of the ele-
ment of the sums paid by the occupier of a house to his
landlord. The occapier, in the first place, paid his rent,
and then a composition rate. The landlord had a bonus of
10 per cent. for collection of the rates. This was an advan-
tage to the landlord, and entailed no charge on the parish.
But by the present bill that 10 per cent. was to be thrown
into the sea. At present the landlord received some
compensation for tl deficiencies of the insolvent
tenant. The landlord's share in the composition ranged
from 25 to 33, 60, and in some cases
,to 75 per cent. This
was much larger than the compulsory assessment under the
Small Tenements enactment, which gave 0n1y25 per cent.
Could there be a doubt, then, that to remit this would be a
ffne on the landlord? He compounded at present for some
houses that were occupied, and for some that were
empty. He took from the solvent tenants in occupied
houses enough to pay
the composition rates for insolvent
tenants and for empty houses. Under the bill the occu-
pier would take from the landlord everything he had paid.
Ile (Mr. Gladstone) wanted to have a distinct and specific
answer to this question—lf the solvent occupier of a £lO
house sought enfranchisement, paid his full rate, and with-
drew from the tenement, how was the landlord to be in-
demnified for paying the rates of the insolvent tenants and
of the empty houses out of his own pocket. (Hear, hear.)
Enactments unjust to the landlord might be passed, but it
would practically be very difficult to oppress him. Ile had
arms which could not be taken out of his hands. The
injustice which you attempted to perpetrate upon him he
would by an easy process transfer to the tenant. The land-
lords would never consent to pay that fine—they would
break up the composition. They would raise the rent and
throw a double burden on the occupier. The whole scheme
was a most ingenious device to make the landlords the
enemies of popular enfranchisement. (Hear, hear.) It was
impossible to conceive of anything more mischievous or
injurious, it would not only break up all the arrangements
between landlords and compounders, but by a in-
genuity perverse
it would bring both parties into direct antago-
nism. (Hear, hear.) Some would say they were pro-
moting the privileges of the compound householders. But
were the landlords to be sacrificed for that purpose? Cer-
tainly not ; they had a perfect right to discourage any
attempt to give, at their expense, those privileges to
the compound householders. The whole scheme
would lead to this inconvenience, that contracts be-
tween landlords and tenants would have to be unsettled
from yea; to year. It would lead to great soreness, from
that to anger, and thence to opposition to law and order.
The bon. member for Hula on looked at this as a great in-
convenience. He 'said it was a test of public virtue, but it
was no such test. Hundreds of large property holder s would
avail themselves of this means of acquiring influence. By
taking out wholesale orders from the Post-office, and send-
ing them round by a steward to get signatures, transacting
the whole business and paying every farthing, and con-
verting men into ratepaying householders without there
ever being the smallest difference in any process connected
with their tenure, under the. name cf a Reform Bill, the
rotton boroughs of ancient times would be revived. This
was a perfectly original method of accomplishing that ob-
ject, but it was once the mischief of which when once in-
troduced would with difficulty be removed. Ilisbon. friend
proposed to take his stand on the act of Sir W. Clay, but
then he must say that he wasastoteshed at the superfluity
of fears which possessed the designers of the bill, when
they were not content to take their stand upon that act.
Whathad in
agents threerealiyw or four w
was
sS Sir
WioClnays, saet?He granted that the
act through the aid of registra-
tion g of 5,000 oroven
10,000 names, and that so many names had been inserted
on the register in consequence ; but that was not the pur-
pose of Sir W. Clay.
His purpose was the same as that of
and societies, led to the signing
Government, to enable occupiers to obtain enfranchise-
ment individually. Sir W. Clay wry wisely reduced the
obstacles to a minimum, and how sufficient those obstacles
had been found. Ile would like to know whether at this
moment there were 500 voters on the register in the whole
country that had been enfranchised by individual compli-
ance with the act of Sir W. Clay. Ile did not believe there
were 500.
Mr. BRIGHT—Not 100.

Mr. GLADSTONE —He took alarge and liberal estimate
and he challenged contradiction. Why did the Government
not trust the act of Sir W. Clay? Would not that have
done for them? Well, but it was said that there were others
on the register. Certainly, and supposed they were to be
enfranchised by the act of Sir W. Clay ; but the number of
householders quoted by the hon. member for Oldham (Alr.
Hibbert) had not been enfranchised by that act. He as-
serted with some degree of indistinctness in his informa-
tion as to proportions, so far as he could learn, from the
small number of householders who had come npon the re-
gister since the passing of Sir W. Clay's Act, by far the
larger majority had been placed upon the register in utter
disregard of the conditions of that act. They never claimed,
they never paid, they never tendered—neither the one nor
the other. They complied with no conditions at all, but
parish officers—benevolent and philanthropic as they might
have been—(a laugh)—or strong political partisans, as he
was afraid it was often the case, sometimes by the vigorous
exercise of benevolence shovelled them by thousands on
the register. (Hear.) That was the way that enfranchise-
ment, for the most part, happened under the act of Sir W.
Clay. Even then what did this act do ? It did this. The
total number of male occupiers at and above £lO was, he
thought, 639,000. Of these male occupiers 95,000 were
compound householders, and therefore 544,000 were direct
ratepaying inhabitants. The 514,000 ratepaying house-
holders yielded 78 per cent, of the voters, and the 95,000
compound householders yielded 27 per cent. of the voters.
(Hear, hear.) Was that too many ? Why did the Govern-
ment not take Sir W. Clay's Act ? Now, really, could they
desire anything more than thie to be able to trumpet to
the country that they had enfranchised with unparalleled
generosity 100 men, and yet to enjoy the comfortable con-
sciousness that out of that 100 721 por cent. would never
come upon the register? He did not think it was neces-
sary to take all this trouble to provide additional securi-
ties. (Laughter.) Their humane minds might have been
spared the sympathy he was sure they would all feel
with all the torture they were going to inflict upon the
compound householders. They might have accepted
those provisions in the act of Sir W. Clay, and might
at the same time have gained both the objects of a vast
nominal enfranchisement, and the more vital object of
a very narrow real one. (Hear, hear.) But the present
state, he must say, of the compound householders was not
the praise, but the opprobrium of the electoral law—(bear,
hear)—that out of three comnound householders who ought
to be on the register only one could find his way there,
and that by accident, by lottery, by the particular inclina-
tion and disposition of the overseers of his parish, and not
by his own efforts, uor in proportion to the measure of his
political capacity. He had so much respect for any vote of
that committee and so much desire to attain, if it were pos-
sible, a settlement that would meet the substantial claims
of the country, that if it was considered necessary to main-
tain this phantom of personal rating—for such it was, in his
estimation—if it were considered necessary to maintain the
decencies of what was called the principle of the bill, let
the compound householder send in his claim, but do not fol-
low up the claim by the really preposterous condition of
requiring to change the tenure of his dwelling. He might
be wrong, and he excited a cry of disapproval when he said
that in his opinion it bore the character of a most odious
class legislation ; but it was his most conscientious con-
viction. (Cheers.) He wanted to know how gentlemen
sitting on the benches opposite, or on the benches around
him, would receive an Act of Parliament which made-their
access to the franchise depend on theirchanging the tenure
of their houses. If they would repel it, and treat it as au
insult bud =injury, which they would, let them In careful