The Government of England Part 20

CHAPTER IX

THE HOUSE OF COMMONS

_Const.i.tuencies and Voters_

[Sidenote: Electors and Const.i.tuencies Offer Distinct Problems.]

The composition of any representative body involves two separate things; the electors and the const.i.tuencies. During the first part of the nineteenth century public attention outside of England was mainly concentrated upon the electors, or in other words upon the extension of the franchise. But now that something like universal suffrage has been introduced into most of the countries which have a popular element in their government, the franchise is little discussed, and much more is said about the const.i.tuencies, that is, the method of combining the voters into groups. The change is largely due to discontent with some of the results of democracy, a feeling which finds vent in widespread criticism of representative inst.i.tutions.[195:1]

It was formerly a.s.sumed that the interests of the ma.s.ses of the people were fundamentally identical; and hence the mode in which the electors were grouped was comparatively unimportant, the main question being the enlargement of the basis of representation. We have now learned that the formation of the const.i.tuencies offers a distinct problem with grave practical effects, and popular government not having brought the millennium that was foretold, men seek a remedy in different methods of combining the voters. We constantly see discussions of this subject. We hear of the relative advantage of _scrutin d'arrondiss.e.m.e.nt_ and _scrutin de liste_; that is, single electoral districts or large areas choosing a number of representatives apiece. We hear about the grouping of voters on the basis of their natural economic relations into urban and rural const.i.tuencies; or on the basis of wealth, as in the three-cla.s.s system of Prussia. We hear suggestions of possible grouping on the basis of occupations;[196:1] and a vast amount of literature has been published to prove the advantage of a grouping on the basis of opinions, by some form of proportional representation.

[Sidenote: How Treated in England.]

In England the two questions of the electors and the const.i.tuencies, although usually considered, and made the subject of legislation, at the same time, have always been kept distinct. Each of the great series of measures of parliamentary reform has touched both subjects, but in unequal degree; and, in fact, it was really the state of the const.i.tuencies that forced both problems upon public attention.

The Reform Act of 1832 brought in a general franchise for boroughs in place of the multifarious, and on the whole highly exclusive, privileges which had existed before. It also changed, though in a less radical way, the franchise in the counties. But as a political measure its greatest importance lay in its effect upon the const.i.tuencies by the redistribution of seats. It took from small boroughs in various stages of decay and rottenness one hundred and forty-three seats, and gave them to the counties, and to new large towns. .h.i.therto unrepresented. The Act of 1867, on the other hand, while transferring seats to some extent, was mainly a measure for extending greatly the borough franchise. In 1884 and 1885 both subjects were dealt with radically. By the Act of 1884 the franchise for counties was much enlarged; and by that of 1885 the distribution of seats was reorganised upon a basis closely akin to equal electoral districts.

[Sidenote: The Const.i.tuencies.]

The const.i.tuencies for the English Parliament are of three kinds; counties, boroughs and universities. The last are quite different from the others in nature and franchise, and a word may be said about them here.

[Sidenote: Universities.]

Oxford and Cambridge were given two seats apiece by James I. The University of Dublin, which had already one seat, obtained another by the Reform Act of 1832; and, finally, the Act of 1868 gave one member to London University, one to Glasgow and Aberdeen combined, and another to Edinburgh and St. Andrews. The franchise for the universities belongs in general to the registered graduates.[197:1]

[Sidenote: The Reform Act of 1832.]

Until 1832 each county, and each borough that had the privilege of being represented, elected, as a rule, two members of Parliament. This, however, was not true of the Scotch boroughs, which were, with few exceptions, grouped into districts returning a single member apiece; a system that has been maintained to the present day. Some of the English boroughs had been given the right of electing members by the Tudors and the early Stuarts, not because they were places of importance, but, on the contrary, because they were not populous, and their members could be easily controlled by the Crown--the electoral rights being commonly vested in the governing council, which was a close corporation. Other boroughs that had once been places of consequence had, in the course of time, fallen into decay. So that by the beginning of the nineteenth century many members of the House represented no substantial communities, and were really appointed either by small self-perpetuating bodies, or by patrons, who, owning the land, controlled the votes of the few electors in the const.i.tuency. This condition of things was made scandalous by the open practice of selling elections to Parliament for cash; and the demand for reform, which had been checked by the long struggle with France, began again after the peace, culminating finally in the Reform Act of 1832.[197:2] The object of this measure was to remove a manifest abuse, rather than to reorganise the representation of the country on a new basis, and it applied to the conditions a somewhat rough and inexact remedy. The boroughs with less than two thousand population by the census of 1821 were disfranchised altogether, those with more than two thousand and less than four thousand lost one member, and the seats thus obtained were divided about equally between the counties and the new large towns that had hitherto been unrepresented.[198:1] But the const.i.tuencies still remained very uneven in population--and, indeed, the framers of the act had no desire for equal electoral districts.

[Sidenote: The Reform Act of 1867.]

The same process was continued by the Act of 1867, which again took members from little towns and gave them to larger ones and to the counties. While there was no general attempt to make the number of representatives proportional to the size of a const.i.tuency, a few of the largest provincial towns were given three members; and in that connection an interesting experiment was tried. With the object of providing for minority representation, the electors in the boroughs returning three members--the so-called three-cornered const.i.tuencies--were allowed to vote for only two candidates apiece.

This resulted in diminis.h.i.+ng the real representation of the borough, as compared with the rest of the country. If Manchester, for example, was Liberal, she would probably be represented by two Liberals and one Conservative. But in a party division the Conservative would neutralise one of the Liberals, so that Manchester would count for only one vote, and would, therefore, have only half as much weight as a much smaller borough with two members both belonging to the same party. The experiment gave so little satisfaction that it was afterward abandoned; and it is chiefly interesting to-day because the effort to organise a large party majority so as to compa.s.s the election of all three members gave rise to the Birmingham Caucus, whose birth and whose progeny will be described in a subsequent chapter. Except for the few three-member const.i.tuencies, and a much larger number of boroughs having only a single seat, the const.i.tuencies still returned two members apiece; and this continued to be the rule until the third and last of the great measures of parliamentary reform.

[Sidenote: The Reform Act of 1885.]

The Redistribution Act of 1885, although, like all English measures of reform, to some extent a compromise between the old ideas and the new, rested upon the principle of equal electoral districts each returning a single member. The proportion of one seat for every 54,000 people was roughly taken as the basis of representation; and in order to adapt the principle to the existing system with the least possible change, boroughs with less than 15,000 inhabitants were disfranchised altogether, and became, for electoral purposes, simply a part of the county in which they were situated. Boroughs with more than 15,000 and less than 50,000 people were allowed to retain, or if hitherto unrepresented were given, one member; those with more than 50,000 and less than 165,000, two members; those above 165,000 three members, with an additional member for every 50,000 people more. The same general principle was followed in the counties.[199:1]

The boroughs that had hitherto elected two members, and were ent.i.tled to the same number under the new scheme, remained single const.i.tuencies for the election of those two members. Of these boroughs there are twenty-three,[199:2] which, with the City of London, and the three universities (Oxford, Cambridge, and Dublin), makes in all twenty-seven cases where two members are elected together. All the other const.i.tuencies are single-member districts, a result which was brought about by a part.i.tion of the counties, of boroughs with more than two members, and of the new boroughs with only two members, into separate electoral divisions, each with its own distinctive name.

It may be interesting to note that the Reforms of 1832 and 1867 did not change the total number of members of the House, but merely redistributed the existing 658 seats. By the disfranchis.e.m.e.nt, after 1867, for corrupt practices, of four boroughs returning six members, the number was reduced to 652; and the Reform Act of 1885 increased it to 670, where it has since remained.

[Sidenote: Inequalities in Representation.]

The distribution of seats under the Act of 1885 was only a rough approximation to equal electoral districts; and in time it has become far less close, until to-day the difference in the size of the const.i.tuencies is very great. The smallest is the borough of Newry in Ireland, which had at the census of 1901 a population of only 13,137; or, if we leave Ireland aside on account of its peculiar conditions, the smallest in Great Britain is the city of Durham with a population of 14,935; while the largest is the southern division of the County of Ess.e.x, with 217,030 inhabitants; so that the largest const.i.tuency to-day is nearly fifteen times as populous as the smallest.[200:1] Nor are the inequalities confined to extreme cases; for they exist in lesser degree throughout the electoral body, many of the const.i.tuencies being two or three times as large as many others.

But unless one a.s.sumes that the exact equivalence of all votes is a fundamental principle of political justice, differences of this kind are of little consequence, provided one part of the community, or rather one set of opinions or interests, is not distinctly over-represented at the expense of another. Now, in Parliament an over-representation of this kind does exist; not, indeed, in regard to the different social cla.s.ses or economic interests in the nation--for inequalities of that sort are not marked enough to be important--but between the different parts of the country.

[Sidenote: Over-Representation of Ireland.]

Some parts of Great Britain have grown very rapidly, while the population of Ireland has actually diminished during the last half century; and the result is that whereas in the United Kingdom as a whole there is now, on the average, one member of Parliament for every 62,703 people, England has only one for every 66,971; and Ireland one for every 44,147. If a redistribution of seats were to be made in strict proportion to population, Ireland would therefore lose thirty members, and England would gain about as many, while Scotland would gain one seat, and Wales would lose three.

The question of the proportional representation of England and Ireland is a burning one, because the parliamentary system cannot work well unless one party has a majority which can give to the ministry a stable support. But eighty of the Irish members are Nationalists, who do not belong to either of the great parties, and may at any general election acquire a balance of power, and cause confusion in politics, as they did after the election of 1885. The loss of twenty-five seats, which they would suffer by a reduction of the Irish representation, would materially lessen that danger. The Conservative government was constantly urged by its supporters to make the transfer of seats from Ireland to England, and was actually preparing to do so at the time it resigned in 1905. On behalf of Ireland it was argued that this would be a violation of the Act of Union, which was in the nature of a treaty, and allotted to Ireland one hundred members in the House of Commons.[201:1] On the other hand the advocates of the policy replied that the terms of the Act of Union cannot be forever binding under a change of circ.u.mstances; they referred to the fact that in 1868 the Church of England was disestablished in Ireland, notwithstanding the provision in the Act for its perpetual establishment there;[201:2] and they said that conditions had so changed as to justify a redistribution of seats. The Irish, however, claim that the great bulk of their people wanted disestablishment, and that Ireland could waive provisions made in her behalf; but it may be urged that the provision about the Church was made for the benefit not of Ireland, or its people, but of a minority there.

The formation in England of new const.i.tuencies for the seats transferred would raise great practical difficulties. Even if it did not involve a general redistribution bill, it would necessitate changing many of the districts. Quite apart from the danger of incurring a charge of gerrymandering for party purposes, there would be a host of personal interests of members of Parliament to be considered. Each member affected would be anxious that the change should not make his seat less secure than before; and claims of this sort have peculiar weight in a country where, as in England, the sitting member has almost a prescriptive right to renomination by his party.

[Sidenote: Effect of the English Method of Distributing Seats.]

The English practice of rearranging the const.i.tuencies, and apportioning the representatives among them, only at long intervals, of treating a bill for the purpose as an exceptional measure of great political importance, instead of the natural result of each new census, has the advantage of preventing frequent temptations to gerrymander. But, on the other hand, it raises the matter of electoral districts to the height of a const.i.tutional, and almost a revolutionary, question, preceded sometimes by long and serious agitation, and always fought over on party grounds. This is a perpetual difficulty, for the s.h.i.+fting of population, which must always be changing the ratio of representation, will from time to time make a redistribution of seats inevitable.

[Sidenote: The Franchise.]

The extension of the franchise was long a grave const.i.tutional question also, but it has now been so nearly worked out that it can hardly be regarded in that light in future. Before the Reform Act of 1832 the franchise in the counties depended entirely upon the owners.h.i.+p of land, an old statute of 1429,[202:1] having confined the right of voting to forty-s.h.i.+lling freeholders; that is, to men who owned an estate of inheritance, or at least a life estate, in land of the annual value of forty s.h.i.+llings.[203:1]

In the boroughs the franchise was based upon no uniform principle, but varied according to the custom or charter of the borough. Sometimes it depended upon the tenure of land; and, since residence was by no means always necessary, it might happen that the voters did not live in the place, and there were even cases where members were returned to Parliament by boroughs that had no longer a single inhabitant. Sometimes the right belonged to the governing body of the town; sometimes to all the freemen; sometimes to all householders who paid local taxes; and in one place, at least, it extended to all the inhabitants. In these last cases the franchise was actually wider before the Reform Act of 1832 than it was afterward, so that although the act enlarged the electorate very much on the whole, and preserved the rights of all existing voters, it narrowed the franchise seriously for the future in a few places.[203:2]

[Sidenote: Reform Act of 1832.]

[Sidenote: Counties.]

In the counties the Act of 1832 continued to treat the right to vote as dependent upon the tenure of land, although in some ways restricting and in others much more largely extending it. In order to prevent the manufacture of forty-s.h.i.+lling freeholders for electoral purposes, the act provided that a voter must have been in possession of his land for six months, unless it came to him by descent, devise, marriage or promotion to an office;[203:3] and, also, that if he held only a life estate he must either have acquired it by one of these methods, or must be in actual occupation, unless again it was of the clear yearly value of ten pounds.[203:4] On the other hand the act extended the right of voting in counties to persons ent.i.tled to copyholds, and leaseholds for sixty years, of the annual value of ten pounds; to leaseholds for twenty years of the value of fifty pounds; and to leaseholds of fifty pounds annual value without regard to the length of the term, if the tenant was in actual occupation of the land.[204:1]

[Sidenote: Boroughs.]

In the boroughs the Reform Act wrought a complete change. Except that it preserved the personal rights of living voters,[204:2] and retained the privileges of freemen in towns where they existed,[204:3] it swept away all the old qualifications,[204:4] and replaced them by a single new franchise based exclusively upon the tenure, or rather the occupation, of land. The new qualification was uniform throughout England, and included every man who occupied, as owner or tenant, a house, shop, or other building, worth, with the land, ten pounds a year. But while the franchise in the boroughs was thus based, like that in the counties, upon land, the effect was entirely different, and was intended to be so.

It has been said that the framers of the act meant the county members to represent property, and the borough members to represent numbers. The boroughs, as will appear later, did not really stand for numbers, but the counties did certainly represent property, and that in spite of the Chandos Clause which admitted fifty-pound leaseholders and was resisted by the authors of the bill. The electorate in the counties consisted of the landholders with a few large farmers, while in the towns it comprised the great middle cla.s.s.

Later in the same session acts of a similar nature were pa.s.sed for Scotland[204:5] and Ireland;[204:6] and in fact it was the practice until 1884 to deal with the franchise in the three kingdoms by separate statutes.

[Sidenote: Effect of the Act of 1832.]

As the practice of keeping a register of persons ent.i.tled to vote at parliamentary elections did not begin until this time, it is impossible to say precisely how much the Act of 1832 increased the size of the electorate. But from returns made just prior to the pa.s.sage of the Act,[205:1] it would appear that the number of borough electors in England and Wales was then about 180,000; whereas immediately after the Act had gone into effect it was 282,398.[205:2] The total increase in the borough electorate, which was the one chiefly affected, was therefore about 100,000, and a great part of this increase consisted of the voters in the large towns that had been given seats for the first time by the Act.

The new system was in no sense either democratic or proportionate to population. The average ratio of electors to population for the whole United Kingdom was about one in thirty; but the variation in different const.i.tuencies and different parts of the kingdom was very great. In the English and Welsh counties the ratio ran all the way from one in five in Westmoreland, to one in thirty-seven in Lancas.h.i.+re, one in thirty-nine in Middles.e.x, and one in sixty in Merioneth. In the English and Welsh boroughs it ran from nearly one in four in Bedford and Aylesbury, where practically all adult males were voters, to one in forty-five in the manufacturing towns. In Scotland even a smaller part of the population enjoyed the franchise. In the counties the ratio ran from one in twenty-four in Selkirk, to one in ninety-seven in Sutherland; and in boroughs or districts, from one in twenty in the Elgin district, to one in forty in that of Linlithgow. In the Irish counties it ran from one in fifty-eight in Carlow, to one in two hundred and sixty-one in Tyrone; and in the boroughs from one in nine in Carrickfergus and Waterford, to one in fifty-three in Tralee.

The proportion of members of Parliament to population was far more uneven still. As reformers at a later date were constantly pointing out, one half of the borough population of England was contained in sixteen boroughs, and elected only thirty-four members; the other half, numbering less than two and a half millions, still returning two hundred and ninety-three members; while the counties with eight millions of people returned one hundred and forty-four members. Thus it happened that less than one fifth of the population in England elected nearly one half of the representatives; and as these came from the boroughs it can hardly be said that the borough members represented numbers.[206:1]

[Sidenote: Later Reform Bills.]

Mr. G. Lowes d.i.c.kinson, in his "Development of Parliament during the Nineteenth Century,"[206:2] has pointed out that while the framers of the Act of 1832 had not the least intention of introducing democracy, the measure itself could not have furnished a permanent settlement of the franchise, and was destined inevitably to lead to further steps in the direction of universal suffrage. The first step was a slight reduction, in 1850, of the amounts required for the qualification of voters in Ireland.[206:3] This was followed by a series of moderate English reform bills, which failed to pa.s.s the House of Commons.[206:4]

[Sidenote: The Act of 1867.]

In 1867 Disraeli, who had educated his reluctant party until it accepted the political need of extending the franchise, brought in a bill with elaborate safeguards against the predominance of the ma.s.ses. Under the existing law a small fraction of the working cla.s.ses had votes in the boroughs;[206:5] and it was Disraeli's intention to admit a larger number of the more prosperous workingmen without giving them an overwhelming weight in the electorate. But the parliamentary situation was peculiar. The Conservative government, which had come into power only through the quarrels of its opponents, had not a majority in the House of Commons, and could not insist upon its own policy; while the Liberals were not under the sense of responsibility that comes with office. The result was that the bill was transformed by amendments, the safeguards proposed by the cabinet were swept away, and a far longer stride toward universal suffrage was taken than any one had expected.

In the counties the Act of 1867[207:1] reduced the ten-pound qualification for owners and long leaseholders to five pounds, and created a new twelve-pound occupation franchise. But a far greater extension was made in the boroughs, where two new franchises were introduced. The most important of these was that of the "householder,"

whereby a vote was given to every man who occupied, as owner or tenant for twelve months, a dwelling-house, or any part of a house used as a separate dwelling, without regard to its value.[207:2] The other franchise admitted lodgers who occupied for the same period lodgings of the clear value, unfurnished, of ten pounds a year.[208:1] In the course of the next session acts, in general similar, were pa.s.sed for Scotland and Ireland.[208:2]