The Sun.
London, England, 1866-08-31 00:00:00

Mr. Laing and His Constituents,

(From the Northern Ensign.)
On Monday evening Mr. Laing addressed his
Wick constituents in the Temperance-hall. Mr.
Laing's visit to Wick had been anticipated for some
time with considerable interest, chiefly in conse-
quence of the repeated assurances from various
quarters that he would scarcely dare to face the
electors, and that if he did a vote of censure on his
Parliamentary conduct with reference to the Reform
Bill would be carried by an overpowering majority.
Mr. Laing accordingly resolved to put these predic-
tions to the test ; and although the season is the
worst for holding public meetings, all classes being
absorbed in the herring fishing, he selected the best
night for a meeting, and liberally circulated placards
calling it. The night was wet, but the attendance,
which at first was considerable, gradually increased
till the large hall was filled.
Mr. LAING said—The Session which has just ex-
pired has witnessed a great many exciting political
events. Of course, honest differences of opinion
must prevail on such questions as we have had before
us ; and conscious that such differences must prevail
I think it much better for a member of Parliament
to meet his constituents frankly and openly, and
explain his votes and state his opinions without re-
serve. (Cheers.) With that view • I have to thank
you for coming here to-night to hear me. The most
exciting topic of the Session was the Reform Bill
which was introduced by the late Government. On
that question my votes are before the public and
speak for themselves. I believe there has been some
misunderstanding and misrepresentation of my ac-
tion in regard to that measure. I have even heard it
said that I voted against Reform altogether, or
against an extension of the franchise. Now, in point
of fact, I did nothing of the sort. (Cheers.) I voted
for the £l4 rental in counties and £7 in boroughs,
and, in fact, voted with the Government and for
the bill on every division, with one exception.
That was to compel the introduction of a com-
plete measure, dealing with the redistribution
of seats as well as the franchise. (Cheers and
hisses.) I had a very strong feeling that any mea-
sure which re-opened the great settlement of the
Reform Bill of 1832 ought to be, like it, a complete
measure, holding out a fair prospect of a permanent
settlement, at any rate for a considerable term of
years. It was evident that no measure could effect
such a settlement which dealt with a part only of the
question, and left untouched the most important and
difficult part of any Reform—viz., the redistribu-
tion of seats. (Applause.) It was a farce to talk
of Reform which left decaying villages in the west
of England, such as Honiton, with a larger voice
in the representation than such counties as Lanark,
or such cities as Dundee or Aberdeen. (Applause.)
As a Scotch member I should have been deserting
my duty if I allowed the opportunity of a resettle-
ment of Reform to pass without endeavouring to
obtain some redress for the glaring inequality in the
representation of Scotland, whether measured by
population or property. (Applause.) Accordingly,
I exerted myself to the utmost to compel the Go-
vernment to couple a measure for the redistribution
of seats with that for the extension of the franchise.
Our efforts were successful, and the Government
found the feeling among their own supporters so
strong that they were compelled to give way, and
bring in a bill which provided for the transfer of
50 seats from small and decaying boroughs to large
and populous constituencies, and which gave seven
of the suppressed seats to Scotland. (Applause.) I
do not suppose this vote requires any justification,
for it has been fully justified by the result. I be
lieve there is no one who does not now admit that
the Reform Bill ought to have been complete from
the first, and that Ministers committed a great mis-
take in supposing that the House of Commons could
be hoodwinked into passing half a measure. As far
AB I know, no one ever approved of such a mode of
dealing with Reform, except a few advanced Radi-
cals, whose avowed object was not to settle the
question, but to keep alive continued agitation by
keeping Reform Bills before Parliament Session after
Session. At any rate, the late Government admitted
their error, for they altered their course, although
they had carried the second reading of their
Bill by a small majority, and the practical result of
the efforts of those who, like myself, advocated a
complete measure was to supplement the original
bill by one redistributing 50 seats, and giving seven
additional seats to Scotland. (Applause.) If this
be hostility to Reform, the Reformers of 1832 who
insisted on the disfranchisement of Gatton and Old
Sarum were, 1 suppose, Tories in disguise. (Ap-
plause.) However, having got a complete measure
of Reform, I voted for it on all subsequent occa-
sions. I did so with considerable doubt, for, as I •
shall state presently, there were many things in the
bill of which I did not approve; but, on the whole,
I thought that as long as there was a chance of set-
tling the question by any fair compromise it was my
duty to cling to that chance, and not give a vote
calculated to defeat Reform altogether. I attached
great importance to the settlement of the question
when it had once been raised, feeling that if left
open to agitation it might revive those feelings of
antagonism between classes which have happily be-
come extinct. (Applause.) Accordingly I was pre-
pared to go a long way in waiving my own indivi-
dual views for the sake of effecting a compromise,
and settling the question, even though it had been
necessary for Parliament to sit all the autumn for
the purpose. (Applause.) I should have been quite
willing to have sat at Westminster the whole autumn
if there had been a possibility of settling the matter
by that means. At the same time I have never con-
cealed that I thought the measure very crude and
impeded, and that the break up of the Liberal Go-
vernment was an almost necessary consequence of
their conduct in regard to it. I believe the problem
of Reform may be thus stated :—On the one hand
we have a system which, since the great Reform
Bill of 1832, has worked admirably, which has car-
ried out so many reforms that no practical griev-
ances remain to be redressed, and which repre-
sents with great accuracy the real enlightened
public opinion of the country, 'and the interests
.of all its principal classes. On the other
hand, the progress of intelligence and respecta-
bility among the working classes has been
such as to call into existence a large number
of men who are quite as well qualified for votes
as many of the £lO householders, and whom it is
in every respect desirable to include within the pale
of the constitution. But there is one great diffi-
culty in the way of enfranchising this class, which
arises from their number. It is obvious that if the
working classes generally are admitted by a simple
and uniform reduction of the household franchise,
their superior numbers will enable them to swamp
all other classes, and must ultimately lead to the
substitution of democratic institutions for that
mixed form of goveinmeat which now prevails with
such happy results. Accordingly the great, and, as
far as I know, the sole argument for reopening the
question of Reform in quiet times, when there is no
practical grievance, and no definite demand for
specific change, is, that it affords an opportunity
for considering the various means of solving this
complex
new
lZplexproblem, and importing into the constitu-
WorkiPnrinCiples which may enable us to admit
classes largely and liberally to the
franchise, without risk of materially altering the
present constitution ofbl the House of Commons,
which works soNow, the great objec-
tion which I felt to the Government Scheme of Re-
form was that it ignored these questions al together,
and, instead of solviuo., shirked what every think-
ing man feels to be the real
afew of the
difficulties of the ques-
tion. For instance, the following
points which ought to have been thoroughlyare worked
out, with the aid of complete statistics, by any
Ministry introducing a Reform Bill which
was to
be, like that of 1832, a great constitutional settle-
ment of questions vitally affecting the future desti-
nies of this great empire. In the first place, should
the extension of the franchise to the working classes
be based solely on household residence, or partly
OD the possession of property and partly on
education? The former is Mr. Bright's view, who
advocates household suffrage, and accepts a £7
rental franchise as a step towards it. But the
advantages of a " property" over a " brick and
mortar" franchise are iu many respects very great.
t is a far better test of the *nos of the work-

ing-class voter than the accident -whether rents are
low or high in the locality in which he resides. There
is a striking illustration:of the anomaly involved in
the " brick and mortar" franchise, if you compare
Wick with many towns in the south. A£6 house
here is a much better house than a £lO house in the
large towns of England, and a £6 householder in a
small town is in every way more worthy of possess-
ing the franchise than a £lO householder in a popu-
lous city where rents are high. (Applause.) It
makes the franchise a vast instrument of moral im-
provement, which consideration is almost entirely
abandoned if we adopt the " brick and mortar" as
our sole principle. For these reasons I have always
viewed with favour the old constitutional forty shil-
ling freehold franchise, and advocated its introduc-
tion into Scotland. If, taking this as our basis, a
£4O franchise (which represents the capitalised value
of 40s. a year) could be introduced, enabling every
man to obtain a vote who, by economy and good
conduct, had acquired property of any description
of the value of £4O, whether in the savings-banks
or any other banks, or in stocks, shares, land, house,
boat, and nets—( a laugh)—or other stock in trade,
or an interest in any insurance, building, or co-
operative society, I think you would not deny that
it would be most desirable. (Applause.) I know
-of no objection to such a franchise, except that there
might be practical difficulties in working the regis-
tration ; but, as I have already said, what have we
a Government for, and why do we raise the ques-
tion of Reform in quiet times, if it be not to go
thoroughly into such questions as to whether the
difficulties of working a property franchise really
are insuperable ? In the second place, there is the
education test, proposed in a Bill introduced last
Session by Mr. Clay, which met with much sup-
port from earnest Liberals. Admitting that the
idea of a competitive examination as the sole test
for the franchise is chimerical, might not some edu-
cational test be adopted ? There is not a railway
company which does not require reading and writ-
ing as a qualification test for a common porter, and
would it be unreasonable to impose it as a test for
exercising a voice in the policy and councils of the
British Empire ? Again, is it impossible, with the
machinery of the Civil Service Commission, to
establish some system of examination, open to every
one, not specially connected with the annual regis-
tration of voters, but by which any one might obtain
a sort of elementary degree, or certificate of educa-
tion up to a certain standard, which, while available
for other purposes, might carry with it, when coupled
with other qualifications, such as age and residence,
the right to be placed on the register? The sound
principle I take it, in extending the franchise to
classes whose numercial preponderance endangers
the balance of the Constitution, is to endeavour to
make the possibility of obtaining a vote as wide as
possible, so that no deserving man can say that he
is inevitably excluded, but to couple the actual vote
with some easy test which shall require some mode-
rate degree of foresight, prudence, and self-denial
to obtain it, for you are not to throw your seats
broadcast to those who will take no pains to possess
them. (Applause.) There is a third point of great
importance which ought to be thoroughly consi-
dered, and that is, whether it is necessary or de-
sirable that any new Reform Bill should go on the
principle of an invariable and uniform reduction of
the franchise in all boroughs alike ? It is notorious
that in England the class of intelligent artisans and
mechanics who desire the franchise, and who would
be likely to give an independent vote, exists mainly
in the large towns and manufacturing . districts,
while in the smaller boroughs, in many of which
bribery and undue influences already prevail, the
effect of an indiscriminate reduction of the house-
hold franchise would almost certainly be to increase
those evils. I may refer to one instance—the town
of Great Yarmouth—which has lately come under
my personal knowledge, because I sat on the Par-
liamentary Committee appointed to inquire into the
legality of the election for that place. It is a good
sized English town, of between 30,000 and 40,000
inhabitants, and it appeared that bribery bad always
prevailed in that borough to such an extent that the
honest man there was not the man who took no bribe
at all, but the man who was only bribed on one side,
for it was the common practice for a man to take
bribes from both parties, and finally to vote for the
side that paid him best. (Laughter.) In that
borough of Great Yarmouth, owing to the preva-
lence of bribery, the whole class of freemen were
disfranchised ; but that did not remedy the evil, for
corruption having entered the place, the £lO house-
holders continued to receive bribes. The practical
effect of a uniform measure of extension in a borough
like Yarmouth would be to put back on the register
the class of men who were struck off for bribery.
Now, it deserves serious thought whether a uniform
scale ought to be applied to such places as these and
other towns where no such effects could be dreaded.
Again, there are classes of boroughs, such as the
Scotch boroughs, where a £6 franchise will notori-
ously give a higher standard of respectability and
intelligence than would be given by an £8 franchise
in the ordinary English boroughs. Is it absolutely
necessary to overrule these considerations, and lay
down a principle of unqualified uniformity, which
must lead, sooner or later, to the preponderance of
mere numbers ? There is a fourth matter that de-
mands deliberation, and that is the question of the
representation of minorities. Almost all thinkers
who have approached the subject have contended
for some system of voting by which large and in-
fluential minorities might secure some share of the
representation. Earl Russell adopted this principle
in his Reform Bill of 1854, and its adoption in the
present instance seemed more than ever appropriate,
to give three members to a number of large con-
stituencies, in which it was desirable, on the one
hand, not totally to swamp the Conservative ele-
ment, and on the other, to secure some special re-
presentation for the working classes. Not a word,
however, fell from any member of the late Govern-
ment to show that this important point had been
ever considered. In the fifth place, the question of
the expense of elections ought to be considered. I
do not speak of Scotch elections, or of my own elec-
tion ; for here, as generally in Scotland, the expense
is very moderate indeed. (Applause.) But in Eng-
land the contrary is the case. There the expense of
elections is becoming really enormous. It is be-
coming so heavy in the counties that it is difficult
to get respectable country gentlemen to come for-
ward as candidates, and it thus tends to throw the
representation into the hands of some great noble-
man or some millionaire, who has amassed a colossal
fortune by trade or manufactures. It is really a
great evil that through the immense and increasing
expense now attending English elections, Parliament
is rendered difficult of access to all who have not
vast wealth, and if the expense goes on increasing,
the result will be that you will have a House of Com-
mons made up of the nominees of territorial mag-
nates or merchant princes, sprinkled with a few de-
magogues who get in by professing extreme opinions.
The increasing expense of elections, and the preva-
lence of direct and indirect bribery in many consti-
tuencies, are admitted to be great evils, nor can it
be doubted that in many cases the proposed increase
in the number of voters would have simply aggra-
vated the existing state of things. Without re-
quiring, therefore, that all theclabue nseesogfraaftebdillin afor
the prevention of bribery should
Reform Bill, it was reasonable to expect that this
important branch of the subject should have received
some consideration. For instance, unless the re-
presentation of minorities were to be adopted, why
should three membere have been given to one over-
grown constituency, instead of dividing it into two
or more manaffeable districts ? There is one other
point of great consequence that ought to
be considered—viz., the principle of rating. Is
or is not the old constitutional principle a right
one which couples payment of rates with the right
of voting ? or, in other words, which declares
that the duties and privileges of citizenship shall go
together ? This principle was maintained by the
Reform Bill of 1832, and there could not have been
a greaterabandon o r more
it.
Ne reason
fundamental
whatever
wc change than
assigned
dn t
foro
this important change. (Applause.) Mr. Glad-
stone gave some reason why the column of " gross
estimated rental," rather than that of " rateable
value" in the English rate-book, should be adopted,
but this was quite consistent with maintaining the
principles of the Reform Bill, of requiring pay-