At the Adjournment last night I had just delivered my soul on the subject of redistribution, and had reminded the House of Mr. Gerald Balfour's proposals in 1905. It may well be that the memory of that expedition into gerrymander land in 1905 has prompted the insertion of the last phrase in this reasoned Amendment of the official Opposition, because those proposals were without a shadow of doubt formed solely in the electoral interests of one political party, and that as a matter of course was the Tory party. The last ditch that we have to jump in this Parliamentary steeplechase of franchise reform is that of votes for women. But in good hands, and with steady nerves, I think the awkward place may be successfully negotiated. Unhappily the militant methods adopted by the suffragists make the risks look rather bigger than they really are. The mischievous and misguided movement is only dragging the fair fame of womanhood into the mire and dirt, and if women are going to enter public and political life regardless of all spiritual and religious claims then it will be a bad day for mankind in general and for womanhood in particular. After all, votes for women can only be obtained through the medium of this House. Neither the Prime Minister nor the Home Secretary, who are two brave men doing their duty by their King and country, have got votes to give away. They do not form part of the patronage of either of their Departments. It is Parliament alone makes the laws and creates Acts of Parliament. If the women are sincerely desirous of obtaining the Parlia- mentary vote they have now got the chance of a lifetime, for what does this Bill propose? It proposes to give one Parliamentary vote for every male person of twenty-one years of age who has resided or occupied premises for six consecutive months in any particular constituency.

This measure is a masterpiece of simplification. "Wayfaring men, though fools shall not err therein." There will be precious few appeals to the County Courts or anywhere else. All the advocates of woman suffrage have to do is to persuade a majority of this House to give the same privilege to every female person that it gives to every male person, and then complete victory will be theirs. It is almost unthinkable but that some of the women will have the Parliamentary vote at the next General Election; how many time will show. The Government in this Bill have taken the bull by the horns and it is for this House to treat the cow in the same fashion. I voted for the Conciliation Bill every time I had the opportunity because that Bill sought to carry out the promise in my election address to extend the Parliamentary franchise to women as it is in operation in town and county councils. I declare that I shall vote for first Amendment in Committee that seeks to give the Parliamentary franchise to women. I hope that it will be a moderate and acceptable Amendment at the outset. It might be, perhaps, for instance, that at the next General Election every female person should have the vote who is above 30 years of age. There would be 8,499,121 of those in England, Wales and Ireland. I have not got the figures for Scotland. The Scottish Office may be very sure, but it is certainly rather slow. At the following election the age might be reduced to 25; and then there would be 10,340,204 females above that age. After that election the age would be the same for female persons as for males, that is twenty-one years, and there would then be 11,943,550. It ought not to pass the wit of this House to put franchise reform into such a democratic shape that at once we shall enfranchise the whole of the manhood, and in a very few years the whole of the womanhood as well.

We need not fear that we shall be swamped by those twelve million of women voters being put on the register. It will be a long time before 50 per cent. of them ever exercise the vote, and it will be for educational agencies to set to work to try and teach them the way in which they ought to exercise the ballot. It is merely my own opinion, but I have formed the opinion that full effect of the extension of the franchise in 1885 was not really felt until the General Election of 1906. If it takes twenty-one years for men to realise their powers and privileges and responsibilities, how long will it take the women? It certainly will be a very very long time before anything like the bulk of the women voters exercise their privilege. As a usually silent back bench supporter of the Government, I have no manner of misgiving as to the course I shall pursue with regard to this measure. I shall vote against this Amendment. I shall vote for the Second Reading; I shall vote for the Amendment in Committee to extend the Parliamentary franchise to women, and, whatever the fate of that Amendment may be in Committee, all being well, I shall vote for the Third Reading of this measure.

The hon. Gentleman who has just sat down seemed to devote the greater part of his speech, or, at all events, of that portion of his speech to which I had the privilege of listening to the discussion of an Amendment to the Bill which is subsequently to be moved in Committee. He told us his views on that Amendment, and what course he proposed to pursue on it. In the observations I propose to make to the House I shall not myself, although I shall refer to this question, discuss the merits of either that Amendment or of woman suffrage, regarded from any aspect or from any point of view; but I shall take advantage of the calm of a Friday morning, supplemented as it is by an extremely hot day in July, and by demonstrations on the other side of the channel, and of all these combinations of soothing causes in this the quietest part of the sitting, to endeavour to give some of the reasons why I at all events mean to oppose this Bill in all its stages; In one sense it is not worth while arguing the merits of the Bill which are going to recommend it to the House. It is not the merits of the Bill which have really been under discussion. It is not the merits of the Bill which have moved the enthusiasm of the hon. Gentleman opposite and his Friends. We all know that this is the most frankly partisan measure which was ever brought in—[An HON. MEMBER: "Withdraw."] The most frankly partisan measure; and that however powerful may be the array of arguments which would be possible to bring against it no argument was likely to outweigh the importance of the fact that in the eyes of hon. Gentlemen opposite it may make their chances at the next General Election less gloomy than at the present moment. It is not, I fancy, the improvement of the franchise, but the improvement of the prospects of the Radical wirepullers which really moves the enthusiasm and secures the support of hon. Gentlemen opposite, though it has not secured their presence in this House in any large numbers during Debate. As far as I have been able to understand, the Ministerial case for the Bill, it is that our present system is full of anomalies, that this Bill cures the anomalies, and that that great desideratum is so fully accomplished by this measure that we ought to welcome it with general approval. I do not doubt for a moment that there are anomalies in our present system; I do not doubt for a moment that it would be wise to remedy some of those anomalies.

But when I hear the use that hon. Members opposite make of the word "anomaly"; when I gather from their speeches the extraordinary importance they seek to attach to having a system which symmetrically conforms to some abstract dogma which they have in their mind, I really listen to them with surprise. They are the very people who, in common with us all, on the proper occasion when they are not discussing a Franchise Bill, are always telling us that the British Constitution has grown and has not been made, that it is not the result of some process of deliberate manufacture, but that it is the slow and steady growth of centuries, the natural growth and progress in the development of a great and free people. But you cannot have a natural growth without anomalies. Nature does not fit itself into the doctrinaire solutions which satisfy certain minds. No doubt in the process of natural growth a bough here or there may be unduly extended and do harm in some way or another. But the idea that, instead of taking advantage of natural growth, you are to cut this result of a natural process into some artificial shape, quite irrespectively of its history and of the use that can be made of what you call its anomaly, seems to me an extraordinary fallacy. A wise man, I should have thought, in dealing with a long process like that of our Constitution, recognising one of the most interesting points in that growth, namely, that organs which came into being for one purpose have gradually been turned to another account in the progress of generations, would say to himself, "We are the heirs of this long past. No doubt we must modify certain points as circumstances require. But let us use what other less fortunate nations have not got. Let us use the anomalies when they can be used for new purposes. Let us not in obedience to some abstract doctrine try to cut the thing four-square to meet theoretical exigencies." I hear hon. Members opposite sometimes say in regard, not only to this, but to other measures, "If you were starting your Constitution afresh, or if another nation were starting from the beginning, framing for the first time free institutions, with no traditions behind them, would they put in this or that tradition?" Of course they would not. They would not and could not. But are they better off or worse off for that? That is the point. I say that it would be wise to use all that history has sent down to use. We are in the best position, from the very fact that we can use things that others cannot if they are starting de novo. If it were not that I observe this general criticism perpetually contravened by the argument as well as by the practice of hon. Gentlemen I should have thought I was uttering commonplaces of sound political history.

I shall refer, before I sit down, to what I understand to be the theoretical doctrine to which all our hereditary institutions are to be made absolutely to conform. In the meantime may I ask whether there has not been one most notable omission from the great majority of speeches, I believe on both sides, certainly from the speeches on the other side of the House, in connection with this question? Everybody has discussed the theory of representative government, and whether or not a man owning property or having interests in more than one place should have a vote in one place and not elsewhere. Everybody has discussed this question from the point of view of the elector. I am one of those who, while recognising absolutely and to the full, as earnestly, I believe, as any man in this House, that in a country like ours, or indeed in any country, whatever its race or traditions, which has reached our state of civilisation, the government must be government by consent. That is the root of the whole matter. But it is no corollary to that to say that all you have to consider is the machinery by which, as you choose to put it, the people are to be represented in the First Chamber. The word "representation" itself is one of great obscurity. Nobody means, I imagine, that we are to be a mere microcosm of those who send us here. Those who send us here are multitudes of very busy and laborious people, necessarily immersed in their own day-today anxieties and labours, failures and successes. We ought to be better than they in the sense that we devote time to these great and ever-increasingly difficult questions, and it is for us to thresh them out, even if, as I should like to see done in certain cases, the results of our labours are not ultimately submitted to them for decision. If we do not recognise that this House is to be, from the political point of view, not a reflection of those who send us here, but their superiors, men more competent than they are to deal with these questions, then our theory is perfectly fallacious. We, the House of Commons, meet here to debate, discuss, and consider, in this House, in the Lobbies, and in the Committee Booms, questions on which the public at large are not and cannot be as well informed as we are. In that sense we do not, and ought not, to represent them.

I do not know whether it will be regarded as a paradox or as a commonplace—I should wish it were a commonplace—but I believe the whole business of modern democracy is not to devise electoral machinery which will send to this House some one who you say represents the people. The difficulty of modern democracy is to find either by fortunate conditions or judgment some means by which the assembly which we say represents the democracy shall in reality be worthy of all the respect, all the confidence, and all the admiration which, if our Constitution is to be a healthy one, the democracy ought to have for and feel in us. Is that a very simple task? I noticed—I am sorry I could not be here yesterday—in a brief report of the speech of the President of the Local Government Board that he said that in this country we still lagged behind—I am quoting the substance of his speech—other great nations, in the fact that we had not sufficiently democratised—or whatever was the word used—our institutions. Have we been less successful in that greater task, which, as I have just indicated, is the task that lies before Parliament? How has this House stood, and I hope still stands, in relation to public estimation as compared with the First Chamber in other great democratic countries? I am afraid that even we are considered a mark, a target, for a great many jibes and sarcasms; for a democracy is the only parent who never has any inclination to be proud of its own children. I may be unfortunate, but I never hear native critics of American institutions tell me that the House of Representatives, or the First Chamber in the States, throughout the Union, carry with the great multitude of the best judges any great title to respect and admiration. The right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board may have been more fortunate, but I rather think I have heard from him in this House comments upon our brothers across the Atlantic which indicated that he does not quite consider their institutions perfect. What is true there is surely true in other great democracies. I foresee in the future that it will be a more and more difficult task for the First Chamber in this country to maintain what it certainly possessed in times when we had what is called less democratic constitution than now, the respect and admiration, broadly speaking, of the population of the country irrespective of party. It will be more and more difficult for us to maintain successfully that respect and admiration in the future. I listened with great interest to the speech made only a few days ago in this House by the Chief Secretary for Ireland when we were discussing the propriety of a Second Chamber in Ireland—a nominated Second Chamber. The Chief Secretary made, as he always does, a very interesting speech and, as he sometimes does, a rather indiscreet speech. I would say without disrespect, that perhaps you are more certain to hear the truth, the full truth, from the Government Bench about one of their own Bills when they are talking about another Bill.

The right hon. Gentleman was explaining to us why we must set up a Second Chamber in Ireland. He drew a picture of what the First Chamber already was, and, even more, what it was going to be. He spoke of the gentleman who can successfully address an audience of 10,000 persons outside this House, and does not at once get the ear, still less the approval, of the House when speaking inside. Then the right hon. Gentleman goes on:— which the Chief Secretary referred. That again enforces the text with which I began my sermon, which is that, after all, in all these cases we are considering the mere theory of the Constitution, and imagining when we have got the electoral system perfect it does not matter whom you elect, because whoever you elect you are sure to have representation of the electors; forgetting that far more important than these speculations is the general character of the institution which is brought into being.

The House of Commons, let it be remembered, is, I will not say unique amongst those assemblies, but it differs from other assemblies in this, that the House of Commons is a school of Ministers. It is much more than a mere mechanical representation of the people. It is an assembly in which there is a sort of running competitive examination always going on, in which each man, as it were, perpetually practises before his examiners, who are also his fellows, and it is by that process, than which none has been discovered better, that, sometimes successfully, sometimes unsuccessfully, a man rises to eminence in this House and becomes either a critic of Governments, to whom the House is ready to listen, or a Minister of the Crown. I believe the presence of Ministers of the Crown as active Members of this House is of the very first importance, but their presence is becoming more and more difficult. I remember, though I attended when I was Leader of the House far more than my successors, I found it extremely difficult to do so as much as I did, and I am sure they find it more difficult. The difficulties are becoming greater, because the volume and complexity of business is increasing, and if you add the enormous labours thrown upon men standing for difficult constituencies in which there is a narrow majority, I say the life of a public man is becoming almost intolerable.

If you choose to say, and I do not wish to argue this from the party point of view, that seats such as university seats—such, for instance, as Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Robert Peel sat for, or other easy seats which still remain under an existing system—fall more to one side than the other, you are perfectly accurate in your facts. That is so, and I, for my part, should like to see some plan developed in which more equal treatment might be meted out in these seats. But, at all events, the exising system has the enormous advantage that it has come down to us; we are accustomed to it; it has traditions. You may attack it for various reasons, but, on the whole, I think it does commend itself to a great body of reasonable opinion wholly irrespective of party. I glanced this morning through a list of Members for the universities who sat in this House since the great Reform Bill, and also the Members for my own Constituency, the City of London. I am not going into details, and I am not going to balance one name against another name, but I boldly say that these university constituencies compare undoubtedly favourably with any constituencies in the country for the eminence of the men they returned. Even when they were not men who held great positions in history, they have in their time constantly been leading Members of this House, men having authority and belonging to a class which some people think is a diminishing class, who held relatively independent positions upon public questions of the day. If you say to me, as perhaps hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite will say, "You mentioned Mr. Gladstone, but did not Oxford turn round and reject Mr. Gladstone?"—

And Sir Robert Peel, too.

Yes, but I answer, as far as Mr. Gladstone is concerned, Oxford continued to return him long after he ceased to be an orthodox member of the party under whose banner he first fought the constituency. I do not know any other constituency in England, Ireland, or Scotland which would have done that. If I may, without trespassing on the endurance of the House, say one word about my own Constituency, I say it brings up in a most acute form the difference of historic opinion between the Front Bench opposite and those whom I venture to say have thought perhaps more upon this subject than even the present Colonial Secretary. The Colonial Secretary seemed to think that registration in particular localities was a mere accident, a mere machinery for giving a man a vote, but he wholly ignored what is undoubted, that our Parliamentary system is based upon locality and upon the representation of localities. That is the historic basis, and I believe it would be a very great misfortune if that basis were forgotten. We must alter, of course, and modify our system as changes occur in general society, but to lose sight wholly or mainly of this great historic basis would, I think, be insanity, and therefore equal electoral areas, which is the idea of the Chief Secretary for Ireland, do not commend themselves to me. One great difficulty has arisen under modern conditions with regard to representation of localities and the City of London is a classic instance. Formerly a man's residence was in the same place as his business, and there were immense advantages in that, advantages which are now lost, and the loss of which has been increased by a movement referred to by an hon. Member on the other side, the growth of the joint stock enterprises. We all know a man is not less interested in the business of the City of London now than he was when living over his offices. In old days some of the very greatest financiers lived in the City over their places of business. If the City of London had representation then because it was the City of London, because these great leaders of commerce and industry and the finance which moves the wheels of industry here and throughout the whole Empire, and not merely throughout the whole Empire, but over a great portion of the world, surely it is folly to say that the City of London should be disestablished simply because these very men now live in Surrey or Hertfordshire instead of any longer living within the walls of the City. That is what you are doing, and I cannot believe it is right.

1.0 P.M.

The City of London, regarded as the great commercial and financial centre of enterprise, has lost none of its importance. On the contrary, I say if it is not more important, it is as great as ever it was. I think when the history of our institutions gives you the chance of preserving a constituency like that it is real folly not to take advantage of it. I may seem to be very egotistical, and I may be told that I am speaking of my own case, as indeed I am—I make no secret of that—but I think it is a case which, whatever personal importance it may have to myself individually, is of importance to every man in this House, and I think it would be as foolish to disestablish the City of London as it would be to disestablish the universities. I mention the City of London because it is the most flagrant case, but there are other cases; in fact, the centres of business of great cities like Manchester, Liverpool and others all suffer, perhaps in a minor degree, from the electoral malady from which London suffers. I think it would be a profound mistake if this House were in obedience to some cut-and-dry theory to say that in the commercial Empire like ours the commercial centre as such should have no representation. I promised that I would, before I sat down, say something about what I understand to be the principle, the theoretical principle, in slavish obedience to which all these injuries are to be done in the constituencies from the point of view of this House. What is that fundamental principle? I have listened to the Debate with attention, but I really have not yet quite discovered what it is. The Secretary of State for the Colonies and the President of the Local Government Board seem to think that everything turns upon representing individuals, and the further you base your system on the representation of individuals, irrespective of sex, the more perfectly you get that system to work, the happier will the State be, and the more you declare yourselves to be a democracy, the more surely will this House become worthy of its great traditions and fitted for the increasing complexity of the task thrown upon it. How many hon. Gentlemen opposite honestly hope for that. Take first those of whom the last speaker is a representative, those who think that every individual, irrespective of sex, should have an equal choice in a matter of this kind. No man, I venture to say, can honestly hold that opinion unless he goes in for minority representation. I am by birth and residence a Scotchman, and the people of my way of thinking are a very important minority in Scotland. They are not the majority. Our representation in this House is derisive, so derisive that the Unionist vote is distributed by localities in such a way that in this House itself the Unionists of Scotland are most inadequately represented. But where is your theory? If you think you are going to pull down all these ancient traditional elements in the system in order to have your cut and dried theory, giving every man and every woman precisely an equal share in returning Members to this House, you must admit that it carries with it an obligation to find as far as you can a practical method of dealing with the representation of minorities. No such attempt is made. When the Secretary of State for the Colonies says it is not on localities we should found our system, but upon individuals, we say that your Bill belies that statement, and that it is founded on localities and not on individuals. That is the result of carrying out your system which I regard as absurd. You are not prepared to deal with anomalies. The word anomaly is always on your lips, and you say, "Cut them away root and branch and let every man and every woman have precisely the same share in the government of the country." Then how dishonest is the measure you put before us. I am not discussing redistribution. I am not attempting to value the promises so lavishly made by right hon. Gentlemen opposite before this Bill becomes law. But after you have redistribution, the anomaly I am calling attention to, and which is a gross anomaly according to your views, will remain absolutely unchecked, if, indeed, it be not augmented. Then I come to the second point. Here is a Government which asks us to make a profound alteration in our traditional system in obedience to a doctrine. That doctrine is that each individual shall have equal rights. The Government, as a Government, do not know who the individuals are. Some of the Members of the Government say that the individuals who are at present ill-used number 2,000,000; others put the number at 12,000,000. Is that a proper position? If you are to go by theory, if you are to be doctrinaires, if that is what you aim at, at all events make your doctrine clear, and let the Government, which is responsible for the Bill, tell us what the doctrine is. Is it that every individual, or only every male individual, is to have equal rights.

I reject both doctrines. I am not a universal hater of anomalies, but I must honestly say I think the Prime Minister is really in an absurd position. He is going to follow me, and he will be able to explain. Perhaps he will tell us what the defence of this Bill is—on what ground it is going to give individuals equal rights. The Prime Minister tells us that if you give individuals equal rights, irrespective of sex, you do the greatest possible injury to the country, and that it will be a national disaster. Do you not think, when you are dealing with anomalies, when you ask us to do so much in the name of abolishing anomalies, that you should make it clear what is unanomalous that you propose. You have various hon. Gentlemen sitting beside each other, one and all equally hating anomalies—well all equally talking about anomalies. One of them will tell you that he really is logical, that his doctrine is the true one. He is one of those doctrinaires who are prepared to drive the doctrine to the extremest conclusions. He sees no distinction, from a voting point of view, between the sexes, and therefore he is quite prepared to give every man and every woman the same vote. But he does not do it as he should do, and so arrange the system that even those in a minority shall have that minority representation in the House which their position entitles them to. If you are going to base your system on the individual, the female should be considered as much as the male. I quote with some assurance the Secretary of State for the Colonies, who was the first Minister, on the Second Reading, to expound the views of the Government. He is a believer in individuals, but only in male individuals. He thinks your whole system should be based upon equal representation, equal individually, provided that the individual happens to be a man. I call that a very poor doctrine. I am quite unable to understand it. I could understand how any one holding such general views on the Constitution as I hold should think it much better to go on as we have been going on without female suffrage though I do not agree. I cannot understand the man—it may be my fault—I am quite unable to follow the reasoning of the man who says every male individual should have a vote and no female individual. Really it is straining our credulity a great deal to say we must democratise our institution by giving a vote to every casual labourer, and we must stop there and there alone. I therefore venture to say that hon. Gentlemen opposite are not only doctrinaires, but bad doctrinaires. A doctrinaire who will not reason on his own premises is a bad doctrinaire, and that is a condemnation to which really everybody on the other side of the House, whether he be in favour of female suffrage or not, is amenable. I think, from the House of Commons point of view, there is even a more severe criticism to be passed on the procedure of the Government. Many persons, I think my Noble Friend the Member for Hitchin (Lord R. Cecil) is one, think the position taken in modern times by the Government in legislation has produced a great many evils. I think it has produced some evils, but I have never been able to see how you could return to the old system under which the Ministry of the day played no very overwhelmingly important part over legislation. I believe you must in the moulding and framing of great measures in this House leave it to the responsible Ministers of the day and their staff and body of experts with their knowledge of the proceedings of this House. I admit, everybody must admit, there are evils in the system, but it is reserved for the Government to carry out in the most important particular and with regard to the most important question all that is worst in the one system and all that is worst in the other system.

They come forward, and on their responsibility they propose a great alteration in the franchise, and we know what "on their own responsibility" means. It means the party Whips are to use their full authority. It means that all the elements of House of Commons discipline are to be brought into play, and that the Government are going to make an appeal to their supporters to see through the measure which they have brought in. I do not criticise that, but how can you combine that system of Government coercion with the fragment of Parliamentary liberty which you thrust into the middle of the measure? Look how it is going to work. I have not the least idea how the House will vote upon the Amendment to which the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down made such pointed reference, but I should conjecture from the cheerful tone of the Secretary of State for the Colonies that he has reason to think the House will reject it. I do not know, nor is it important from the point of view of my present argument. My present argument is this: The Government publicly announce that when an Amendment, which, if carried, will be in the opinion of the Prime Minister disastrous to the country, is moved, all the Parliamentary apparatus which has been brought into play on the First Reading and Second Reading of this Bill and which will be brought into play on every other stage in the Committee of this Bill and in the Third Reading is suddenly to be stopped, and the House is to go, as the phrase is, exactly as it pleases. Supposing it goes in the direction of accepting the Amendment, the Prime Minister is then actually in the position of having pledged himself to use all the party machinery at his disposal to pass through a Bill, by far the most important of whose provision—far more important than abolishing the university representation or that of the City of London or plural voting—he thinks is disastrous. I think that is an impossible position. It really is the grossest and gravest abuse of our Parliamentary system to use your machinery for the whole Bill, and leave, not a casual and a chance question—we all know there are many precedents for that—but the great and fundamental issue, the greatest of all issues raised by the Bill, on one side.

I believe the whole of this is an ingenious manœuvre. I do not wish to trouble about that aspect of it. I am looking at it, as I am bound to look at it, from the point of view of procedure in this House, and I must deliberately say if to all the evils of Government tyranny you are going to add all the evils of House of Commons licence with regard to one measure, you are doing a profound injury to the whole method of carrying legislation within these walls. I confess no vote I have ever given in this House has been given with greater confidence and satisfaction than the vote I shall give this afternoon against this Bill. It seems to me the Government have, as it were, almost tried to make the House of Commons impotent and ridiculous over this Bill. They bring it on at a most inconvenient time. They insist on a Division on a day which they must know is very inconvenient to a very large number of their opponents. They were able to put off the Second Beading of the Welsh Disestablishment Bill till one section of their supporters came back from Ireland. They choose the Second Reading of another Bill which may be amended so as to be the most startling revolution which any country has ever adopted with regard to its franchise; and they do that on an occasion when this House is probably less capable of expressing its genuine opinion on the Second Reading than at any other season. When you add to those criticisms, the criticisms which I have ventured to pass upon the attitude taken up by the Government with regard to this particular Amendment in the Bill, and when you consider all that it has of evil omen to the future of our legislation, I think the House, even those Members sitting opposite who like the Bill, will find themselves utterly unable to do otherwise than condemn, and severely condemn, the methods by which it has been introduced and by which it is to be carried by the Government.

The right hon. Gentleman has made an extremely interesting contribution to the Debate, and, if I may be allowed to say so, the greater part of his speech—not, perhaps, its concluding passages—was distinguished by a breadth of view and serenity of temper which I shall endeavour to-imitate, and which the right hon. Gentleman himself will agree was appreciated even by this degenerate assembly which he wishes to preserve from a still further process of deterioration and decay. He has summoned to his aid, argumentatively, a passage of rhetorical pessimism from the speech of my right hon. Friend who preceded me, of which I willingly make him a present. He has a more optimistic temper of mind than my right hon. Friend, at any rate, in some moods. I still cherish not only the hope, but the confident belief, that the House of Commons will continue to retain the primacy which it has enjoyed for centuries among the representative assemblies of the world. The right hon. Gentleman said at the beginning of his speech that he was not going to deal with the question of woman suffrage, but I observe as he went on that the temptation proved too strong for the pious intentions with which he began. This subject does not seem to me to be directly relevant to this stage of the Bill, This Bill does not propose to confer the franchise upon women, and whatever extension of the franchise it makes are to male persons only. Speaking for myself, I cannot help remembering, as we all must remember, that the House at an earlier stage of the Session rejected with I think sufficient decisiveness, the proposal to confer the franchise on women, and so far as I am concerned I dismiss at this moment as altogether improbable the hypothesis that the House of Commons is likely to stultify itself by reversing in the same Session the considered judgment at which it has already arrived. I think the apprehensions and alarms that the right hon. Gentleman expressed are at least premature, and will probably turn out to be unfounded in fact. The only thing I have to add until the situation actually arises, if it ever does arise, is that this question of the political enfranchisement of women cuts athwart all our ordinary party lines. There is just as much division of opinion upon it in the party opposite as in the party on this side. I see Gentlemen opposite sitting side by side on the Front Bench who hold diametrically opposite views on that question. I will make this prediction, that whatever may be the fate of the legislation now before the House, whatever Government attempts to deal—and every Government must attempt to deal with it in some form or other—with the question of the franchise and electoral redistribution will find itself in exactly the same position in which we find ourselves to-day. I shall wait and congratulate them, if I am able to do so, on their finding a happier means of escape.

The right hon. Gentleman said this was a Bill brought in by doctrinaires to give effect to some abstract theory of representation. He imagines that those who promote and support the Bill to be animated, like the encyclopædists or disciples of Rousseau, with some special hatred for what are called anomalies in this case in our representative system, and with a passion for something in the nature of complete abstract philosophical uniformity. As far as I am concerned, and I believe I speak the opinion of the great mass of those who support the Bill, I am possessed by no such passion, nor do I follow any such ideal. I have no objection to anomalies as such. The bosses and excrescences you find on a tree often add to its picturesqueness without destroying its power of leafage or fruitage, and so long as anomalies are confined within those limits I shall never raise a finger to lop them off. The argument I put forward in support of this Bill is not founded on the desire to embody any particular representative ideal, but on severely practical considerations. The right hon. Gentleman speaks as though he were dealing with an ancient system of long growth. He seems to think, or leads the House to think, that this has gone on for centuries, and forms part of the secular heritage of the British people. Nothing is further from the fact. There is not a trace, or hardly a trace, now left on the Statute Book of these ancient franchises, and the whole of this system of long growth, towards which the right hon. Gentleman cultivates this reverential temper, dates from the year 1832. It is the creature of Statute.

The old franchises, some of which were reserved in 1832 such as the Potwalloper and Burgage systems, and those franchises for all practical purposes have long ago ceased to exist. You are now dealing with a statutory system created not indeed within the memory of living man, but within the memory of our fathers; created in 1832 and modified, and most fundamentally modified by the Conservative party themselves in 1867, in fact turned upside down and remodified practically with the consent of both parties in 1884 and 1885. Therefore, there is nothing venerable about it. It is not the growth of centuries. It is not one of those beautiful forest trees of the right hon. Gentleman's imagination. It is a framework which has been put together by men not animated by any speculative or philosophical theories of representation, it is a framework put together and readjusted from time to time in order to suit practical exigencies. This Bill is a far less ambitious measure, both in intention and scope, than any of those to which I have alluded. This is a Bill which does not call into electoral existence any new class. In each of the cases to which I have referred, classes of people who had never enjoyed the franchise at all were brought into existence for the first time. That is not the case in this Bill at all. It is a Bill—whether it brings in 2,000,000, or whatever the number may be, and that I admit is largely a matter of speculation—which is intended to do substantially two things, and two things only. It deals with people whom Parliament has already declared to be qualified. It says to a certain class, "You ought not to have more than one vote," and it says to another and very large fraction, "You are at present, though equally qualified in all respects according to the intentions of Parliament, in fact, artificially kept off the register by such obstacles as the length of the electoral period of qualification." That is this Bill, and it is really the least ambitious and the least innovating franchise Bill that has ever been submitted to Parliament. The right hon. Gentleman said very little about the Bill.

That being what the measure means, with all respect to him, let me try to examine his theory of representation for a few minutes. It is upon that the right hon. Gentleman based the main part of his speech. I confess I have some difficulty in understanding what is representation. Representation is the necessary instrument by which the principles of democratic government are applied to large communities. In the ancient world in the small civic communities of Greece, you did not require representation, because you could assemble the whole body of qualified citizens in the Forum or Agora to address them. But the orators addressed them, and the whole of the qualified electorate came there to vote. When communities were extended in area and population in large territories, it was obvious that that system could no longer work. Representative government is a modern invention in order to give practical effect to democratic Government where the conditions of population and space are such that the individual citizen cannot himself make his voice heard. It follows surely from that, or I should have thought it followed—I am not going into a deep philosophical argument—that the object of representation was not to produce what you cannot produce, a precise, accurate, undistorting mirror, reflection, photograph, if you like, of the opinion of the country at any given moment, but at least to approximate, to get as near as you can, in your representative body, to a reflection of the views for the time being on public policy of those who send representatives here in their name to make their laws. The right hon. Gentleman does not agree with that. He said, and I was struck by his words, that the representatives ought to be superior to those whom they represent. I agree, because one of the great objects of representative Government is that the best men should be sent to the representative body, whatever it may be. So far we are all in agreement with the right hon. Gentleman. It would be perfectly relevant to any criticism of our electoral system to say that, by this expedient or by that, without damage to the fundamental principle of representation, you can better attain that most desirable result, but, so far as I can make out, the right hon. Gentleman's superior persons are to come here almost like mandarins, to exercise their own judgment—that, of course, they ought to do on the merits—to propound their own policies, and to follow their own courses, irrespective altogether of the wishes and the opinions—I will not say anything about the pledges or promises—which were rife at the time of the election. I am sure that cannot be practicable. I want to see how the right hon. Gentleman's theory works out, this doctrine of the superior person, if I may call it so. He is to be something more than a delegate or what we understand by a representative. He is to be a superior person, chosen as a sort of figurehead by a constituency, but after that he is to follow his own devices.

All this was intended to lead up, so far as I understand the right hon. Gentleman, to university representation and the representation of constituencies like the City of London. I should like to say a word or two about that. The case of the City of London raises rather a different question, because there the point is that I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman thinks a man ought to vote twice. He has never told us whether he thinks a man ought to have two votes or not, and I do not know what his opinion is upon that point. I do know that a short time ago, when there was a question of introducing a much more revolutionary machinery into our Constitution than anything proposed by this Bill, namely, the Referendum, the right hon. Gentleman himself and Lord Lansdowne, the Leader in another place of the party opposite, both said that for the purposes of the Referendum they would discard plural voting. I do not know how far the right hon. Gentleman holds that view in regard to elections for the House of Commons, or whether, if he does not hold that view, on what ground he discriminates or differentiates between the two subjects. In regard to all that we are in the dark. I do not know whether, when he speaks of the City of London, he speaks of the merchant who in the old days used to sleep above his counter, but now resides at Tooting, or perhaps in Park Lane, or perhaps in some other place far more remote from the scene of his commercial activities. I do not know whether he thinks that man ought to have a vote both in the City of London and in the place where he sleeps. That being so, I pass to what was I think more clear, namely, his views on the question of university representation. The whole of the right hon. Gentleman's arguments on that point might have been borrowed from, and find an exact parallel in Mr. Croker's speech on the Reform Bill of 1831 in defence of the retention of pocket boroughs. The arguments for the retention of pocket boroughs were the desirability of getting into this House young men of promise, or men of learning and education who have not brazen lungs, who cannot go through the labours which my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary described as essential to a successful candidature for a popular constituency—these men were to be secured to Parliament by the machinery of pocket boroughs. There was a great deal to be said for it, because if you take the list of the men who have entered the House for the first time as representatives of pocket boroughs, it is a much more imposing list, I venture to think, than any- thing that can be produced in favour of university representation.

What is university representation in practice, looking at it from the point of view of those who come here as representatives of the university and of those who send them here? I speak with the utmost respect of the many illustrious men who have been sent to the House of Commons by our own ancient Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. They may not by any means always have been men of learning; they have not always been men who have been selected for the representation of the universities because they were men of learning or because in any special sense they represented the interests of culture and education. On the contrary, they have been distinguished politicians. Mr. Pitt, having served his apprenticeship in a pocket borough, was then chosen as the representative of the University of Cambridge, and retained that seat during the whole of his political life. Sir Robert Peel, no doubt a very distinguished Oxford man, was elected as the representative of the University of Oxford. Mr. Gladstone, another distinguished academic man, was chosen for the University of Oxford. What happened? In these cases, as the right hon. Gentleman has already been reminded, the university, having got these distinguished representatives, dismissed them on purely political grounds. I do not say they were wrong, not even in the case of Mr. Gladstone. In Sir Robert Peel's case the provocation was very great indeed, for he, having been returned as a strong opponent of Catholic emancipation, became himself the author and promoter of the Bill to carry Catholic emancipation into effect. The case of Mr. Gladstone is no doubt more complex, because the change in his political views was very much mare gradual and subtle. I am not saying that the university constituencies did wrong. What I am pointing out is that whenever you give the franchise to constituencies of that kind it will be exercised in the long run on political and party grounds, just as much as in the other constituencies in the country. You need not go so far back as the cases of Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Gladstone; we have illustrations of the same thing in our own time. What became of Sir John Gorst, a very distinguished Cambridge man, a high Wrangler, in every way qualified to be a university representative? He for some years represented the University of Cambridge in this House with great distinction, and was a Member of the Government of the day. But Sir John Gorst's political views ceased to be in fashion with the Conservative majority of the electors of the University of Cambridge. He was promptly dismissed, and somebody else took his place. The same thing happened in a much more modern academic body than the University of Cambridge. Mr. Disraeli uttered the famous jibe in the year 1867, when the Franchise Bill of that year was before the House, that he had given representation to the University of London in order to find a seat for Mr. Lowe, who would not get in, he was quite satisfied, for any popular constituency. He sat for some years, not because Mr. Lowe had any connection with the University of London, but because he was a very eminent politician. What happened in our own time? We had sitting here as representative of the University of London perhaps the most distinguished of English physiologists, the late Sir Michael Foster. He was a most efficient and able Member of this House and rendered great services in a variety of ways in our Debates. Sir Michael Foster was elected as a Unionist and I do not know that he ever changed his views in regard to Home Rule. I do not think he did. He remained a Unionist to the end. But when he failed, I think on the vital matter of Tariff Reform, that was the rock on which his ship foundered—when he failed to reflect the predominant opinion of a somewhat conservative constituency he was told he must go and he went. Again, I say I am not criticising the action of the constituency, but, I believe, human nature being what it is and politics being what they are, any constituency, whether you call it a university or anything else, would in the long run send to this House a man whose political opinions are in accordance with the predominant opinion of those who sent him.

So much for the representatives of the universities. Now who are the people who send them here? I am still dealing with the right hon. Gentleman's point—an argument which was advanced with very great force, though I am sorry to say in a very thin House last night, by the right hon. Gentleman (Sir W. Anson)—that you ought to find some place if you can for the representatives of education and culture. Who are the electors? Take my own University of Oxford. I have never had a vote for the University of Oxford and do not possess one now. I took my degree, I was for some years a Fellow of my College—I am now by the grace and favour of the university one of its Honorary Doctors of Civil Law—but I have never had a vote for the university and have not one now. Why?

Because you would not pay.

Not because I actually failed in the examination. I passed the examination. I got my B.A. degree, but because I was not then in a position and have never since been tempted to incur the otiose expenditure of, I think, something like £20—a very substantial sum of money, at any rate, for a young man and a poor man—which is necessary to qualify for the M.A. degree, which alone gives you the vote. That is not a solitary case. It is, in some respects, typical. I can recall to mind in my own college of Balliol the case of my Noble Friend and late colleague, Lord Loreburn, certainly the most distinguished scholar of his year at Oxford, who never went beyond his B.A. degree, and he, like myself, at this moment does not possess a vote for the university. We had among our undergraduates perhaps the most distinguished, certainly the most learned, poet of our time, the late Mr. Swinburne, who did not even go so far as to take his B.A. The same thing can be said of a colleague of my own who sits on this bench, the right hon. Gentleman (Sir Edward Grey). The fact is the people who take the M.A. degree and pay money for it are the clergy, because it is useful to them in their profession—I say it quite seriously: it is a very heavy burden upon them. Let us hope that among the university reforms which are now in prospect a reduction, if not a remission, of the fees will be included. They take the M.A. degree because it pays them; so do schoolmasters, and so do the resident dons and lecturers, and a sprinkling of other people; but for the ordinary man, the man like myself, who comes down from Oxford or Cambridge into the professional or business world to fight his way there, there is no inducement of any sort or kind to pay this additional sum for your M.A. degree, and it is by the payment of that sum, and in no other way, that you acquire the right to vote. These being the actual facts, as distinguished from the theory of university representation, whether you look to the representatives sent here or to those who send them here, there is no case whatever.

:I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will not wish to misrepresent the real facts of the case. He knows himself that that is applicable only to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and that he himself, without the smallest payment is a voter in my Constituency.

I thought I had carefully confined my remarks to Oxford and Cambridge. The Scotch Universities are more humane. I believe I have myself the privilege, and the only time I ever recorded a university vote it was in the hon. Gentleman's constituency.

Not for me.

It would be a violation, if not of the law, of the spirit of the Constitution, to disclose the secrets of the ballot-box.

It is an open vote.

I have been tempted to say more than I ought to have said, because it seems to me to be strictly germane and really the practical conclusion to which the right hon. Gentleman's philosophic argument led. He and other speakers have said that the Bill is being presented to the House from a party point of view with the object of gaining party votes. It is a Bill which carries out a policy and a principle which has been advocated by the Liberal party both in and out of office for the last twenty years. I am always very chary, and honestly chary, of making predictions as to what will be the political or party result of an extension of the franchise. On almost all previous occasions the most confident prophesies in that respect have been more or less disappointed by the result, and I am by no means confident what the political effect of this measure will be from a purely party point of view. But of this I am perfectly certain—and here I should like some subsequent speaker to meet and answer my suggestion—that you cannot justify our representative system being what it is, on grounds of reason or of practical expediency, the possession by one person of more than one vote or the prevention, by artificial and technical difficulties, of persons otherwise in every way qualified for the franchise from getting on the register. These are anomalies, real anomalies, and not merely excrescences or blots on the picture, and it is with the view of getting rid of them that the Government has introduced this measure.

The right hon. Gentleman the Member for the City of London (Mr. Balfour) spoke of the absurdity of disfranchising that great constituency because those who had votes there did not reside in it. I should like to add this remark. Supposing the Government make this Bill an Act, they will disfranchise the City of London in respect of its present constituents, and instead of those constituents they will have 10,000 caretakers, and if my Noble Friend the Member for the Hitchin Division (Lord Robert Cecil) has his way, they will have 10,000 charwomen. It is not my intention to defend at any great length the plural voter. I would say that I have got great respect, and even affection, for the plural voter, not for the reason that hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite think, but for this reason: We who live in the West country know that the plural voter is able to exercise his opinion very independently. In my own part of the world there were a number of men who used to vote in one constituency for Lord Strachey and in another constituency for Lord St. Audries, because they admired qualities of both Gentlemen. I think the plural voter does infuse personality into principle. The tendency of to-day is to strengthen the machine all over the Anglo-Saxon world, and any man who professes any principles like a parrot may be elected, but it takes the man of high character to live up to these principles. I think a bad man is better than a good machine, and for that reason I should be sorry to see the plural voter destroyed, because he votes for the man, and not only for the thing. But the real question on which I want to touch this afternoon is one that has hardly been alluded to. The right hon. Gentleman who introduced the Bill (Mr. Joseph Pease) mentioned the case of the absentee voter, and my Noble Friend the Member for Hitchin also referred to him. But beyond that, I think the question has hardly been touched upon. I have been rather fortunate, unusually, in opportunities of seeing the great hardship and injustice that does fall upon a great body of men who ought to have votes under the present system, and who have not votes. I think if the present Government follow the course of only dealing with partisan anomalies, and if they refuse to cast their eyes upon the inequities which might militate against them, then it will not have the support of any impartial men in the country.

Before I touch upon these disabilities, perhaps the House will forgive me if I cite the case of a modern democratic and progressive country, which I think has faced successfully this side of the franchise problem—I mean Australia. In the Australian electorate of 1902 to 1909, there is no plural vote at all. There is manhood suffrage and womanhood suffrage. There is practically universal suffrage, because the Australian people have decided to look upon the vote, not as a privilege, but as a right, and having taken up that position, they very logically afford every facility for the exercise of that right. If a woman is ill, and supposing that a man is unable by reason of distance to get to the polling booth, they are allowed to vote, either through the absentee or postal vote. There are many regulations to see that the secrecy of the ballot is safeguarded, and these regulations work well. I do not suppose that the Australian franchise scheme is an ideal electoral scheme, or that there is such a thing as an ideal scheme in the world, but I do say that it is a very up-to-date measure of rough justice, and I think if you decide upon any rectification of the present arbitrary boundaries that divide those in this country who have a voice in the affairs of the State from those who have no voice, then you should aim at the achievement of the same principle. The English working man is, I think, a very political creature who is anxious to do the best he can with regard to his duties, but under the present system he is constantly prevented from doing that. Take the case of a man domiciled at Carlisle and earning his living at Plymouth; supposing that an election comes along at the present moment, that man is a cypher. In this Bill the Government do recognise that to a certain extent, and it allows a citizen to exercise his duty as a citizen earlier, but it does not touch the twin incongruity of distance. It touches the question of time, but it does not touch the question of remoteness, and I should like to see that principle extended, not only as to time, but also as to distance. Let me take the parallel case of a man in Australia. Suppose he is living at Toorak and wants to vote at Brisbane. Under the Australian system he can do that by an arrangement which enables him to save himself the expense of going there, and also saves himself the loss of a day's work. All he has got to do is to go to the presiding magistrate and record his vote on a voter's form.

May I ask the hon. Gentleman whether that applies to State elections as well as to Commonwealth elections?

I shall touch on that point in a few minutes. I think it does apply. I will give a few of the figures showing how this is worked, and I will try to answer the question of the hon. Gentleman. In the Senate election on 13th April, 1910, 14,480 men and 14,814 women used the postal vote. There were 20,869 men and 11,348 women who used the absent voters' powers. In the House of Representatives' election, and in the first and second Referendums of 1910 about the same numbers were used. I think that is an answer to the hon. Member's question.

It does not make clear to me whether the voter who was living at Toorak, and who wanted to vote at Brisbane, could vote in the State election in Queensland and also at the Commonwealth election.

I am afraid I cannot answer the hon. Gentleman's question as clearly as I should like, for the reason that an amending Act was passed recently, and I do not know what the effect of that Act has been. These powers have been altered, but I think the principle remains the same. I think that the postal vote has gone to a great extent, but that any citizen may practically vote in any place between the issuing of the writ and the election, and that he may also practically vote at any time. I think I am right in saying that there is one proviso which might be put in this Bill, and that is that any employé has the right to vote in Australia, and that the employer is bound to afford him an opportunity for recording his vote. There are other small amendments which I shall not touch upon. I should like very much to see that principle extended to the working men of England, because I think that can be done without a great deal of difficulty. I should like to see it extended to merchants and mechanics, and to British citizens and taxpayers in great communities like Smyrna, Paris, and Constantinople, who have every right to have a vote, but who under present conditions are excluded from it. Hon. Members opposite may say it would require an immense amount of new machinery. I do not think it would. I think we could do it very simply in the majority of cases through the councils. Under the present condition of things we all know what great expense it is to our friends to send out their motor cars during the election and what great danger to friend and foe there is in those motor cars dashing about on polling day. If you adopted the system of the absent voter it would do a great deal to diminish that danger and cut down the expense to our friends. I cannot believe that any Bill which professes to simplify the electoral franchise in England will be accepted by the country which preserves the existing absurd state of affairs with regard to Englishmen abroad who by accident and accident alone are not able to vote. The Civil servant in England has the vote; the Civil servant abroad has not. The sergeant or petty officer in Portsmouth has the vote; the sergeant or petty officer abroad has not. In the old days there might have been some strong arguments in support of that state of affairs, but since the invention of the telegraph and the penny postage those arguments no longer exist. A vote must be either a right or a privilege. If it is a privilege the last people from whom it should be taken are those who serve their country. If it is a right then the man who serves the country has the strongest of all possible claims to it.

2.0 P.M.

Hon. Members opposite may say that there are grave complications in such a scheme as this. I quite admit that, but I do not think that there are any insuperable difficulties. Such objections would come ill from hon. Members opposite. Hon. Gentlemen who advocate the taxation of abstractions like land sites, who support all the complexities, racial, economic, and fiscal of the Home Rule Bill, who pretend that the Insurance Act is as simple as a child's reading book, are not the people to raise objections to this proposition on the ground of its complexity. Satan would be better employed in rebuking sin, or Don Juan in reproving flirtation, than hon. Members opposite in condemning this scheme on the ground of its complexities. I can foresee two other objections which may be raised. The first is that in every place our Consul may not be present to take the votes, that you may accept what I say with regard to Lisbon or perhaps Oporto, but that it is impossible to have this system on a battleship. That I entirely deny; it is perfectly possible as long as a battle is not going on. Discussing this question with opponents they have constantly said that it would delay the declaration of the poll. That might be the case, but even if it were I do not think in trying to get at the truth of a great question, a delay of a few hours or days has anything to do with the matter, but is purely irrelevant. Under the present Bill you are giving alike to the good man and the bad man, the wastrel and the sober man, the same power over the destinies of the nation, but you are excluding those great communities of Englishmen upon whom a great deal of the prosperity of this country depends, who live abroad. You are excluding the entire Army and Navy abroad, and the whole Civil Service of Egypt, the Soudan, and India, and what you are really doing is to exile you are adding disfranchisement. To the man who works for the Empire you are saying, "You shall have no powers of criticising the Government you serve, or of adding your voice to the voices of the people you protect so long as you stay abroad, and so long as you do not come back to a life of ease." That is an unfair principle, and if this Government acts up to its professions, I believe that in this Bill it will attempt to meet that great grievance.

With the very interesting contribution of the last speaker I do not feel competent to deal, beyond saying that I am sure we shall all tomorrow read and study the suggestions which he has made. At the same time these are not proposals that are before the House in the measure which the Government has brought forward, and therefore I will not refer further to them in the few observations which I intend to offer. We have four main arguments addressed from the other side of the House. The first is what may be called the property argument. It has been skilfully presented to us by the junior Member for the City of London (Sir F. Banbury), who claimed that the franchise should be proportionate to the wealth of the voter who exercises it, the same as the voting power of shareholders in a public company is in proportion to the amount of their holding in that company. I really think that that argument need no longer be examined in this twentieth century. We have long since in this country discarded the idea of basing political power upon wealth, and especially upon the proportion of wealth. The second argument is the educational argument, which also has been put forward by many able speakers. This argument has been examined in former franchise controversies, and has been discarded many years ago. A distinguished man lately referred to by the Prime Minister, Mr. Lowe, was I believe, an advocate of the educational franchise. These things have all been talked out. As to the question of the university seats, I need not refer to it, because it has been most skilfully debated by the two disinguished right hon. Gentlemen from the Front Benches. The fourth argument is one which has really amazed me, yet even the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the City of London (Mr. Balfour) opened his speech with a repetition of that argument, which has come from every speaker on the Tory Benches, namely, that this is a party move on the part of the present Government; that it is intended to gerrymander—although I think the word is wrongly used—and to attempt to secure some privilege and advantage to the Liberal party as against the Tory party. That is not true. All we try to do is to do that which is equal and just, and I am surprised at the argument which is advanced. Ex hypothesi, the argument is that the plural voter is a Tory asset, and when we propose to abolish that handicap we are told that we are pursuing a party object.

Surely it is astonishing that Gentlemen leading the Tory party, Gentlemen who are mostly British sportsmen with the instinct of fair play, should object to the abolition of a handicap and to a fair fight being secured. You would not, if you could, have a handicap in your favour on the cricket field or in any other sport. What you want is a fair fight in these matters, and that we have never had. The Liberal party has been handicapped by these plural votes, not to so great an extent, in my belief, as most people think, still it has been very largely handicapped in many cases by this dual vote. It has been argued as though the plural vote, as it is called, the ownership vote, was a vote representing wealth. Our objection to it is not that it represents wealth or property, or position or educational distinction, or anything of that kind; it is a second vote, and it is a dual vote, so that the man who has voted already and given his opinion of the Government in one constituency, can go into another constituency and give a second vote, and thus gain a privilege and advantage which must mean a deprivation to those who do not enjoy that privilege and that advantage. Time after time, in this Debate, we have had the conflicting argument addressed to us that this Bill tries to do too much at this time of the Session, and yet, at the same time, and in the same breath, the Government are twitted with not having proposed to add the franchise for women and a redistribution of seats. Surely that conflicting argument answers itself, and does not need further consideration. I have risen for the specific purpose of pointing out that the House of Commons will have the chance this afternoon to give a Second Reading to a Franchise Bill which certainly, in my judgment, is shorter, simpler, and far more comprehensive than the Bill which the Government have introduced. If they want to extend the franchise to the municipal voter as well as to the Parliamentary voter, and if they want to include women, they can vote for the Second Reading of that measure. The Bill which I back—it is my Bill—will not become law thereby, but there is no reason why it should not form a substantive item in our discussion of this Government Bill when it goes into Committee.

The only objection which my right hon. Friend the Colonial Secretary (Mr. Harcourt) put forward in his speech as to the enfranchisement of women was that there were too many of them. No doubt there are a great many Members of the House on both sides who think that a proposal such as is to be found in this small Bill, namely, that every man and woman of full age, and whether married or single, shall be qualified to vote at a Parliamentary or local election, is too wide, but I would just point out that nothing short of that will give satisfaction. If you fall short of that entire enfranchisement, you will still have the women pursuing vexatious courses and agitating more and more. The proposal in this Bill is the only logical solution, and every other solution is less just and, in my judgment, less easy to defend. My right hon. Friend says that this Bill, the Government Bill, is based on the principle of manhood. I would simply add the word "womanhood," and the thing is done. I know the Prime Minister has just explained to us why it is perfectly impossible to put female enfranchisement into the Govern- ment Bill. We know that. I think myself, and I want to say so, and I would like all the women who are asking for votes to know what I say, that the Government has gone as far as any divided Government can go, and they have no other way before them which would not break up the present Government, and I do not want to see that occur. Therefore I vote very cordially for a measure which I think is fulfilling the demand of the Liberal party; at any rate, the last and unanimous demand, the loud demand of the Liberal party for the last quarter of a century, and which has been accepted in principle by the Tory party, only that they wanted to add, as we want to add quite as much as they do, one vote one value. It is because I think we are sweeping away a number of irritating inequalities and difficulties which prevent people, such as Wesleyan ministers and others, from having the vote, difficulties which cost much time and trouble in connection with registration work that I believe this Bill will give enormous satisfaction and will largely fulfil the distinct and persistent mandate which the constituencies have given.

When this Bill was first spoken of I thought, having taken a great interest in the greater question of redistribution, that I might have an opportunity of supporting the Government; but I must confess that the Minister of Education, in his speech, and that the Colonial Secretary, who also spoke, have wholly disillusioned me and dashed what hopes I entertained to the ground. Both those right hon. Gentlemen have deliberately, on behalf of the Government, taken up only one bit of the controversy at a time, and they have taken up the only controversial bits which the ordinary citizen, the man in the street, cares little about. I put aside, of course, the question of woman suffrage. What is it that the ordinary citizen wants? He wants one man one vote and one vote one value, and he wants to make this House representative of the electors according to the votes recorded, by proportionate representation, or whatever you like to call it. You are going to abolish plural voting by this Bill, I quite admit, and you are going to put a savage penalty on a man who has, say, a business in London, and who happens to vote in my Constituency in Middlesex. You put on that man as great a penalty as you put on men for various serious offences. What does that man who exercises the vote in Middlesex think, or the average Middlesex citizen think with seven Middlesex Members representing each over 28,000 voters, while there is no attempt to deal with the question of redistribution except in a Preamble, or in the pious opinions of the Colonial Secretary, or of the President of the Board of Education, expressed long years ago in one of his election addresses? What does the Welsh Unionist think of this Bill, or the Liberal voter in Surrey, Kent or Sussex? In Wales, in 1906, 52,637 Welsh Unionists recorded their votes, and they got not one seat. In 1910, thousands of Liberal voters in Kent, Surrey and Sussex similarly recorded their votes, and they got not one seat.

They have two divisions in Kent.

Any way, they did not win as much as they would have won if they had proportional representation. An even more scandalous thing it what occurs in the case of the Unionists in the South, West, and East of Ireland, who for more than thirty years have been absolutely disfranchised without a single man to represent their opinions inside the walls of this House. There again the Government in this Bill are not going to do anything to remove that grievance. I would like to give a concrete example of how the injustice works out. Take the city of Leeds, which might easily be polled as one constituency. In 1910 in that city 27,622 Liberals recorded their votes, and 22,366 Conservatives and 6,734 Labour also voted, being a total of 56,700. You have got now for Leeds four Liberal Members and one Labour Member. I ask any fair-minded man in any quarter of this House is it fair that those 22,000 Conservative voters should be unrepresented, and that 27,000 voters, or but 5,000 more, should have four seats. Obviously on the basis of electors the Conservatives ought to have two seats, but the fact that we have the Liberal and Labour Members in coalition makes it doubtful whether the Liberals ought to have two and the Labour one, or the Labour two and the Liberals one, but calling them Progressives, to use that word, they should on the figures have three Progressive votes, and there should be two Conservative votes, while in fact we have no Conservative and five Progressives. That is an anomaly which ought to be done away with, but this Bill is not going to touch it. I am not going to throw names at the Front Bench opposite; I know perfectly well that in 1811 the Governor of Massachusetts carved out a State in a certain way so that his party won and he preserved his salary. By doing so he added the new word "gerrymander" to the English language. I am not going to accuse hon. Members opposite of gerrymandering in this Bill, nor am I going to argue as to proportional representation, but I regret that the Bill does not go farther and that I cannot heartily support it. I believe a vast number of Members on all sides would support a Bill drawn in much broader terms.

I have the honour of being joint secretary of a Committee from both sides dealing with redistribution, proportional representation, and short speeches. I suggest to the Government that they should withdraw this Bill and send it upstairs so that we could be able to draft a good Bill for them, and they could present that new Bill next Session. If they did that, we would be able to bring forward a measure which would secure a Second Reading, and which would be popular in this House and in the country. The Colonial Secretary said we could not have redistribution until the question of Home Rule was settled, as we entered into a solemn treaty with Ireland over a hundred years ago, and that to reduce the number of representatives from Ireland would be absolutely breaking the treaty. The Front Bench opposite are very careful and tender about preserving treaties at present, but in 1868 hon. Members who sat over there were not so tender. Article 4 of the Act of Union stated that Ireland must have a hundred Members, but Article 5 states:—

"That the Churches of England and Ireland as now by law established be united into one Protestant Episcopal Church, to be called the United Church of England and Ireland, and that the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government of the said United Church shall be and shall remain in full force for ever as the same are now by law established for the Church of England, and that the continuance and preservation of the said United Church as the Established Church of England and Ireland shall be deemed and taken to be an essential and fundamental part of the Union."

Liberals of years gone by broke the Act of Union when they abrogated Article 5. They are now, in their own interests, proposing to break Article 4. For myself, speaking as a man who comes from the South of Ireland, I say I do not care particularly about having Irish representation reduced. Give us fair representation or some scheme by which the Unionists of the South and the West and the East of Ireland can come to this House, and I, personally, shall not press for a reduction of any seats in Ireland. Until you do that, you are committing a great injustice. I am extremely sorry I shall not be able to vote for this Bill.

I desire to support the principle of this Bill, which is brought in with a view to remedying some of the recognised anomalies and defects of the system under which we at the present time are working. The object of representative government is, of course, to endeavour to secure a correct representation of the feeling of the people of this country, and to have representatives in this House of that feeling for the management of the affairs of the nation. As this Bill proposes to rectify some of the existing abuses, I rise to support it. In framing the methods by which the expression of the opinion of the people can be given, we assume that the education of the past has developed a wider interest in the affairs of the country than previously existed, and I think that at present we are justified in including others than those who are owners of property or occupiers of houses, so that in future the franchise will be based rather upon the individual citizenship of the population than upon the accidental possession of qualifications. The exercise of the right to vote is a great responsibility, and in dealing with the questions that are presented to the electorate at the time of a General Election, thought is required. It does not do to rush too rapidly into the consideration of great questions. The more mature the thought can be, the safer are the conclusions arrived at likely to be. Therefore I rise specially for the purpose of asking the Government to consider the question of altering the age for the twenty-one years, at which the Bill now proposes to give every male citizen of regular residential life the right to vote. As the registration of the voters has to be reconsidered, there would be an advantage in the framing of the scheme for working this Bill if the age limit were put at twenty-five rather than twenty-one. As children grow up and come to maturity they are occupied in the preparation for their life work. When the age of twenty-one is reached an important epoch occurs. Young men have completed their ordinary time of training or apprenticeship, and they are looking out as to how best they can apply their energies and abilities. They leave the parental home in search of a place in which they can make a living and build up a position. In addition to the advantage which I first mentioned, of bringing a more mature mind to bear upon the great issues that are placed before the electorate when the franchise has to be exercised, there would be this further advantage in allowing to pass the four extra years during which a great migration from the homesteads takes place and young men find themselves settling down in one constituency or another.

I am able to make this suggestion because many other Members had expressed to me their anxiety that the Government should reconsider this question. It would be very easy, if it were necessary, to present in a more formal manner a request signed by hon. Members urging the adoption of the course I have suggested. But that would not be necessary if the Government recognised that in dealing with this great matter it is our custom to proceed by stages. If in a few years' time it was thought that the growing intelligence of the people demanded a further lowering of the age, there is no reason why that should not be done if we adopted twenty-five to-day. Another reason may be mentioned. Reference has been made to woman suffrage. Whilst it is generally admitted that it would be impracticable to carry a resolution giving the franchise immediately to some 10,500,000 or more women, a more favourable consideration might be given to a proposal to bestow the franchise on women if the number to be included was not so great. In the past we have heard it argued that as the county council and municipal franchises were already enjoyed by women, there was no sound argument that could be logically pressed for denying them the right to vote in Parliamentary elections.

If those who supported the Conciliation Bill on the theory that sex should not be a disqualification were brought face to face with the necessity of choice when the extension of the male franchise was given, they might be pressed to say that as they supported it before they must vote for this; but when it is a question of 10½ millions, they might feel that it was impossible for them from other points of view to support it. It would be very much better for the Government if they adopted the suggestion I have made, and in Committee carefully and sympathetically considered an Amendment which, by altering the age to twenty-five would reduce the number of voters who would, under the Bill, as it stands, be included. Twenty-five is the age that I would recommend, but if that is objected to as being too high there is no reason why twenty-four should not be accepted. Twenty-five, however, seems to be generally held to represent the age at which a man has become settled in position and can bring a more mature mind to bear upon the general questions involved in the exercise of the vote. Whatever the result of the extension of the franchise may be, we at any rate cannot agree with the suggestion that we had brought this proposal forward purely from a party point of view. The public have a right to the vote and to exercise it as they like. If in the ebbs and flows of the exercise of that vote the representatives of this or that party fail to secure a majority in this House, it does not of necessity follow that people in all places are of the same way of thinking, and so we find a Government established and an Opposition always present to represent the two sides of a question.

The hon. Member who has just sat down suggested that the age of twenty-five would be a good age at which to be given the vote. I think there is much to be said for that view, although I myself much prefer the age of twenty-one. But I should like to call attention to what is to be found in this Bill, and that is that the age of twenty-one is nowhere stated. The language used is very different. A person who appears to be of full age is to have the vote. Every lawyer is perfectly familiar with that phraseology. We have instances of it in Acts of Parliament where no offence is committed against a child if she "appears" to be of a certain age. Therefore in this Bill, for the first time, you will find a provision nowhere else to be found—namely, that a vote is to be conferred on a person who appears to be of proper age. The hon. Members for Leicester and for Salford said they could not follow the argument that we are putting forward in contending that this Bill is a political and purely party measure. Anybody who attentively listened to the speech of the Prime Minister should be convinced that our point is just. Apply it in the case of university Members. May I remind this House that the university franchise is no part of or in no wise found in Acts of Parliament giving the ordinary franchise to the ordinary voter in other constituencies. The university franchise is either a privilege conferred by charter or a special Statute.

What did the Prime Minister say? He was at long pains to point out that the university franchise for Oxford and Cambridge depended on the payment of £20 or £25. He was reminded by the hon. Member for Aberdeen University that that was not the case for Aberdeen or any of the Scottish universities. Observe: you are proposing an amendment of the qualification for a vote in regard to ordinary constituencies because of the anomalies; in regard to the universities, you find those anomalies depending on a wholly different class of Statute, which has no reference whatever to other constituencies, but you do not propose to amend those anomalies. You say, "Abolish the Members." You see that is a party thing! If you will only listen further to the Prime Minister his speech was a most eloquent exposition of that. It is quite true to say that substantially the representatives returned for the universities are Unionist or Conservative. I think most people would grant that. The Prime Minister proved it. He is going to abolish the representation. Do you not see that is gerrymandering? How can it be said in future that with regard to the university question this was not a party political measure 1 In other words, you think that you will be nine votes stronger, and that we shall not have those nine votes to cast against you. In my judgment the Prime Minister proved our case, and how hon. Members can get up one after another and say that they do not appreciate our point passes my understanding. This is quite true in regard to the other proposals of your Bill.

So far as I have listened to the Debate, and I think I have been here substantially throughout, I have not noticed this point raised: We know—it is admitted—that without redistribution you cannot approximate to one vote one value. I do not think anybody would contest that proposition. What is the other consideration? We have been told over and over again that this measure will give effect to the principle of one man one vote. That is quite untrue and inaccurate. Do the two hon. Members for Leicester recollect that in their constituency everybody has two votes, because they can cast one vote for each Member? Why are you going to leave that anomaly untouched? There is, I suppose, a compact between the two parties—Labour and Radical—by which compact you get the hon. Gentleman the Leader of the labour party as one of the Members and the hon. Gentleman who spoke yesterday as the other Member. On what ground of "one man one vote" are you going to leave that anomaly in the constituencies which return two Members 1 It does not arise in Leicester only. Take the case of Newcastle-on-Tyne. You find there precisely the same condition of things. You have your Radical Member, and you have your Labour Member.

I would like the hon. Member to illustrate his argument from the City of London or the University of Dublin.

Does the hon. Gentleman really think that his interruption was worth while? Does it differ at all from the very point I was contending for. Not a jot! Not one bit! The matter does not rest there. You have the same thing in a number of boroughs throughout the country. If this is not a political party measure why not deal with them? Our point is this: You cannot make this reform without redistribution. What did the President of the Local Government Board in his speech hold out to us? A pious expression of opinion that the Government would introduce a Bill for redistribution in their own good and proper time. Do right hon. Gentlemen think that anybody will rely upon that after we have been deceived with regard to the Parliament Act, which contains the intention of the Government in the Preamble? I say that we cannot rely upon what the Government promises to do in the future. I say most emphatically that if anybody fails to understand our argument as to how and why we regard this Bill as a pure political trick, when you have regard to the illustrations that I have given, I cannot follow their reasoning. This measure, in my judgment, is grossly unfair, for this reason: As I read this Bill a man may have two qualifications; he may have a qualification by residence—I am speaking now of the Parliamentary vote—and he may have a qualification by occupation, which does not involve a residence. Under this Bill the injustice is this: He will only appear once on the register.

I do not object to his only getting one vote, but to the fact that he can only appear once on the register. In other words, he cannot select in which constituency he would vote. Why not? Take the City of London; many a man has a qualification by occupation who will have another by residence. He can only be on the register in respect of one place, and he will be disadvantaged if he goes on for his place of occupation by losing his residential qualification. Why not give a man a right to be registered for both, and the right to elect in which he will vote. I say that is another injustice, and I say the Bill is full of inequalities which the Government think will militate against us and assist them. Another point that I take grave exception to in this Bill is the absence of any provisions in regard to redistribution, which, to my mind, dominates the situation. Nobody in this House will deny that residential qualification is a qualification which will far more largely increase the number of voters in the boroughs than in the counties. I do not think that will be disputed. Let me take the borough of Romford, which has 52,000 voters already; an immense increase on that number will obviously be made by virtue of the residence qualification in this Bill. What will be the result in the case of the Member who sits for Romford? Looking at the returning officer's expenses, the situation is appalling. You are making it perfectly hideous as regards expenses, and you really cannot readjust things there without redistribution. Why not bring in a redistribution measure? We are to be put off with promises of intention from the President of the Local Government Board. We do not accept these promises, simply for the reasons I have given, that we believe this Bill is solely intended to serve the purposes of one political party and not another. We have had hon. Gentlemen opposite talking about the question of registration expenses. Is that to be considered? How do you meet it? By this Bill you are going to make the burden greater in regard to great constituencies without redistribution.

I did hope that, as we had hitherto enjoyed the privilege of looking through some sixty Acts of Parliament to see whether or not one was entitled to a vote, that when a measure was introduced to simplify the franchise, it would be one complete measure sweeping away all previous Acts and preserving only what ought to be put into this Bill so that we might see at a glance exactly what it is you propose to do. Take the first Section of this measure. There you set out in terms that a period of six months' continuous occupation qualifies for the vote. One might presumably suppose that that was so, but it is not so in fact. When you turn to the Acts unrepealed you find that a man will not be disqualified so far as occupation is concerned from getting his vote, even if he is absent for a period of as much as four months on business of any kind. If that is right in regard to occupation, why not introduce it in regard to residence? Indeed, as I understand the legal position, it is this: Your residence continues in law if you voluntarily go away for a short time intending to return again. On the other hand take the case of a soldier or a sailor. If he is compulsorily sent away on a command which he has got to obey, on active service, or to sea, he loses his residence. Why do you not make proposals so that we shall know exactly where we are in regard to disqualification. In my judgment this method of registration will continue the difficulties that existed under previous forms and will amplify them. There are many other difficulties of that kind. Take the question of the local government electoral values. What is the position there? Does the House realise that under this measure you are giving a vote to aliens in regard to local government? It does not say so in the Bill, but if you look in the Schedules, you will find provisions that exclude aliens are proposed to be repealed. That is another example that this measure was not fully considered. The Government are endeavouring to press this measure solely for the purpose of their own interest at the next election.

I cannot pass from this Bill without dealing with the question of woman franchise. Speaking for myself, I am opposed to women having the Parliamentary vote, and I shall vote against it no matter what happens. I cannot understand the attitude of the Prime Minister who says he thinks this matter is dead. The hon. Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Leif Jones) yesterday congratulated the Prime Minister upon the fact that he introduced this measure leaving it open for people to raise this question of female suffrage and being free to vote whichever way they liked, and he complimented the Prime Minister on his astuteness in so doing. I find it difficult to follow the Prime Minister when he says he thinks this question is closed. Why does he not tell us that if the measure is passed through Committee with an Amendment in favour of female suffrage, the Government will drop the Bill. The Colonial Secretary was challenged on that point, and what did he say? Nothing, except that he and some of his colleagues will oppose it. I submit that after the (then) Lord Chancellor, speaking at the Albert Hall, some months ago, said that a proposal to enfranchise women in the present Parliament would be nothing less than a constitutional outrage, the Prime Minister is truckling to what he possibly considers a party advantage by his attitude towards this matter. I suggest we are entitled to a declaration of policy from the Government upon this matter. They are bound to take the responsibility for it, and if such an Amendment is carried, then in my opinion the Prime Minister or somebody on his behalf ought to tell us that the Bill is dead. To leave matters in this way and to act in this manner towards a Bill which may enfranchise an unknown number of women is, I suggest, the most degrading attitude ever taken up by responsible Ministers. I was startled when the President of the Local Government Board said, "We do not propose to deal with it, but with the electoral franchise." Apparently the right hon. Gentleman had not considered the measure, and if he had he would not have made that statement. You are dealing with it and you cannot help dealing with it, because in regard to the local government franchise you are reducing the qualification to six months' residence instead of the old qualification, or in other words the occupation registration and the old burgess qualification. I wish the Government would make up their minds what they propose Parliament should do. I want to call attention to some anomalies in regard to this franchise. With reference to the occupation franchise—I am not speaking of the lodger franchise at all—a single woman has the right to vote for all local government electoral purposes, but in the City of London and in the Metropolitan boroughs a married woman has a right to vote. I ask when you are dealing with this question and proposing to codify the law, what is the justice of allowing that anomaly to remain? I do not mind how you proceed. One of those privileges must be wrong and they cannot both be right. Why are the City of London and the Metropolitan borough councils on a different basis from other county councils in the rest of the country? You do not propose to deal with this matter, although you are dealing with the franchise in some important respects. Take Sub-section (2) of Clause 2. Look at your anomalies there. The ownership franchise and the lodger franchise is, so far as males are concerned, confined in all the counties and boroughs of England, except the Metropolis and the London County Council, to the parish council elections, and yet in London those very lodgers and owners have the right to vote at county council elections and Metropolitan borough council elections. What is the justice of that anomaly? Why do you not deal with it? You pride yourselves that you are doing away with anomalies, but as a matter of fact you are doing nothing of the kind. This is all a party trick. Why not deal with those anomalies? Perhaps the President of the Board of Education will give us some reason for this.

3.0 P.M.

Why is the Parliamentary vote put upon a lower plane than the vote which is given for county councils or even parish councils? That is not intelligible to my mind, and perhaps some one who speaks on behalf of the Government will endeavour to make it intelligible. If mere residence qualifies you for a vote for Parliament it should qualify you for a vote for a county councillor or a rural district councillor, but it does neither of those things. You want to hurry this thing through, and you knowfull well that if all these anomalies were considered honestly, and properly dealt with, it would be impossible to carry them through this Session. That is your game. I notice that the President of the Board of Education nods his head, and I take it that he agrees with me that it is a game and that is perfectly clear. With regard to the machinery, you are proposing two things. There is first of all the register, and there is an absolute requisition that the whole register shall be printed once a year, although it is subject to monthly alterations, such as changes of address and occupation. How are you going to correct the original list in this way? In industrial communities the removals are very extentive, and your scheme is far too ambitious if you try to correct the list monthly. Who is going to do the work? Look at the number of corrections there will be. If you are only going to reprint the original register once a year I should like to see a polling clerk trying to carry out his function in regard to any particular voter. Supposing he was asked about John Jones and there happened to be several of that name, how are you going to identify that particular individual? I understand there is to be also a supplemental list printed, and you will have that and your original list to compare. You will be certain to have many difficulties in regard to the question of residence. I think your machinery is fatal to the efficient working of this measure. A more serious objection is the provision for an appeal to the County Court, where you will have all the expense of litigation, and, on the whole, I do not think there will be any saving of expense under this new system. I think it would be infinitely better to set up some machinery whereby some properly qualified officer should determine these matters upon some simple statement which he could investigate. This provision may be attended with litigation in the County Court and all the burden and risk of costs, which is intolerable. Working men cannot afford the time to go into the County Court to claim their rights or to fight their case, and by this method you are putting into the hands of unscrupulous persons a power for ill of which you have no knowledge. Many objections could be raised, and you might have to contest actions with men of straw. The machinery of this Bill is wholly inadequate and unfit for this purpose, and what we want is some simple machinery to deal with this matter, and if that can be suggested, I am entirely in favour of it. You ought to appoint some officer to investigate any statements made by electors claiming a vote, and I would give that officer a conclusive judgment on questions of fact and only refer questions of law to the Court. This Bill from first to last is engineered for one purpose, and one purpose only. It is not promoted with an honest intention to remove anomalies n regard to the electorate, but for party purposes, and for myself I shall vote against this Bill cordially and sincerely from its first stage to the last.

We have heard from the hon. and learned Member for Chatham (Mr. Hohler) the usual argument which is so common in this House that this Bill will not work. Any new proposal which is brought forward is always met with that argument. Only last night we were told that the sanatoria would not work. A week ago we were told that Home Rule would not work whether you had a Single or a Double-Chamber Constitution. A year ago we were told that the Parliament Act would not work, though it is working very well now, and it will carry this Bill through. We were told the year before last that the Budget would never work, and that the Land Taxes would never work, but we know perfectly well now that they are working, and the success of their working is the one question which is exciting the electors at the two by-elections which are now going on. If I may go back to one further instance, we have been told again and again that Free Trade would not work any longer. Well, it is working to-day so well that Conservatives in all parts of the country, even in this House, are throwing up their Tariff Reform principles. It is perfectly true of the hon. Member for the Wimbledon Division (Mr. Chaplin).

The hon. Member must leave that matter.

I leave it very gladly, because it must be painful to hon. Members opposite. I interrupted the hon. Member for Chatham because he developed an argument which was entirely new. He is going to oppose this Bill because it does not do away with two-Member constituencies. It, in his mind, is a horrible and, in fact, a perfectly corrupt system, because it allows by some corrupt bargain the hon. Member for Leicester (Mr. Crawshay-Williams) and his junior colleague the Labour Leader (Mr. Ramsay Macdonald) to sit together on this side of the House.

indicated dissent.

That, at any rate, is as the argument appeared to me, and I venture to say it carried that suggestion. He went on to illustrate it by referring to the conditions in Newcastle, where again you have a Liberal and a Labour Member. When I suggested he might take as an alternative the City of London or the Dublin University, where you have two Conservative Members for a smaller constituency than the average constituency of the kingdom, he discreetly ignored the interruption. If two-barrelled constituencies are to be abolished, I believe we on this side of the House will gain much more than hon. Members on the other side of the House. Is not the hon. Member aware the Government policy is based upon a Royal Commission on electoral systems, which was started in 1909 and reported in 1910? That Commission took up the whole question of proportional representation, and decided against it; but it made two recommendations, small indeed, but important, and one of them was that two-Member constituencies should be abolished at the next redistribution of seats. We have already had a promise from the Treasury Bench that if this Parliament be allowed to run its ordinary course there will be a fair chance of carrying a Redistribution of Seats Bill, and the hon. Member may therefore rest perfectly sure that when we meet together in the next Parliament there will be no two-Member constituencies.

A great deal has been said about university representation. I want to point out to hon. Members opposite, who have supported university representation as something of dignity and antiquity, that, as a matter of fact, university representation is quite a modern innovation. How long has this House been in existence? About 700 years. How long has university representation been in existence? Only just over 300 years. What is the history of it? Again and again the universities, which were clerical bodies and which had their special representation not only in Convocation, but also in the House of Lords, requested the Crown to give them special seats in this House. That request became particularly insistent in the time of good Queen Bess. I do not admire that lady in every respect, but for one thing I do honour her, and that is she persistently and consistently refused to give the universities any representation. When did they get it? When a weak Scotchman came and sat upon the throne. It was James I., himself an alien to English traditions, quite incapable of understanding the British Constitution, who, in 1601, first introduced university representation. From that time to this university representation has really been a failure. It was first started in order to get Court minions sitting in this House and not to get men of knowledge. It was given in those days to lawyers and second-grade men who were willing to sell their country's interests to Court favourites. Later the Church, with its Tory proclivities, always dominated university representation. The Church is very well represented in this House through a number of pious Churchmen here, and, of course, across the corridor they have their special representation. I think really that in abolishing university representation we are going back to the good, old, and honourable days of Queen Bess, who saw the evil, and, I think we may say, foretold the misery this House would suffer if it ever admitted university representation. I think that is quite clear to the House. At any rate, whatever may be thought of the conclusion of my argument, the history and facts are undoubted.

I would like to call the attention of the House to a distant point of view, because I think we being close, as it were, to the heat and struggle and in the dust and smoke of party conflict, cannot judge a measure like this as a man standing at a distance. I was privileged to receive the other day from a learned American friend a learned essay upon the English constitutional system. This is a reprint from a very scientific work, "The Political Science Quarterly," I believe the best known journal devoted to political science in the United States and recognised by all authorities as quite impartial and extremely learned, and here we have this American publicist beginning a discussion on the democratic system as it is to-day in the United Kingdom with these words:— 1601, and was introduced in order get Court minions into this House spy out what the popular representatives were doing. The history at any rate, of university representation is thoroughly disgraceful As for the other point which this writ holds to be one of the great objections to our present system—the non-payment of the official expenses now thrown up candidates for Parliament—that I belie if we may judge from the answer given the Prime Minister to questions put to him by the hon. Member for Edinburgh—that question will be settled before this Parliament comes to a conclusion. I submit that in this Bill we are laying the foundations of a right and just system, as it appears to the great authorities on political science across the Atlantic. Moreover we are the true Conservatives, because we are going back to the original system and idea the House of Commons. Whatever hon. Members opposite may say—and they have repeatedly said that we are only introducing this measure for merely partisends—they may know there is one man who has a little respect for our Constitution and for the great traditions of our past, and who knows there are other and more valid reasons for the Bill.

Many interesting suggestions have be made during the course of the Debate. I am not going to discuss the various Committee points raised. Some no doubt ha been duly noted by the right hon. Gent man in charge of the Bill, and will brought up later on. But I would like refer to a proposal made in various quarters that some age limit above the age twenty-one should be placed in the Bill. The senior Member for Leicester (Mr. Crawshay-Williams) suggests that worn might come in at the age of twenty-five, and there is something in that, especially if they are obliged to sign a paper admit ting that they are of the age of twenty five, such paper to be kept for future reference. But I am totally against the disqualifications of men or women on account of youth. Youth is a virtue I had once but have no longer; still I have the deepest respect for it, and I do not see why the generous impulses of youth should not be represented here. At the present time a number of men between the ages twenty-one and twenty-five are qualified to vote. What are you going do with them if you introduce the twenty-five year limit, as they have got it for voting purposes for the Reichstag in Germany? You would have to pass a separate Clause allowing those already on the register to continue their qualifications. I believe the House will not be in favour of disfranchising anybody or of refusing the vote on account of youth. I should like to refer also to a very important statement made by the late Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Balfour) in connection with the idea of our electoral areas being changed. During the course of this most interesting speech, which, of course, fascinated the House as much as ever, the senior Member for the City of London used these words:— ipse dixit of the right hon. Gentleman, the Member for the City of London. Reform, in any direction you like, may be talked about by the other side, but it will only be carried by this side. Reform in our electoral laws and in our electoral system will only be passed when we have a Liberal majority. That is my reading of the past, and I seriously ask hon. Members opposite, who see the germs of much good in this Bill to deal with it on its merits. It is not opposed in any part of the House on its merits. It has been opposed for what it does not contain. It is opposed because it does not include women and another hon. Member is going to vote against it because it does not include Home Rule for Scotland. The hon. Member for Enfield gave us a very interesting speech in which he said that as it does not include proportional representation it must be wholly bad and he cannot therefore vote for it. Really on its merits the Bill stands four square; it is justified on its merits, and it is only because it does not include every mortal thing under the sun you can bring into the same sentence that it is objected to by hon. Members.

Another matter on which I wish to touch is the idea which has received special confirmation and support from the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the City of London, that we ought to have in this House special representation of special classes. The right hon. Gentleman supported the present constitution of the electorate for the constituency of which he is proud to be the Member. On the same basis he approved university representation. I wish to ask, if you are going to have special representation for different classes, who are you going to give it to, and where are you going to draw the line? Say, for a moment, that soldiers and sailors who are serving abroad, and, therefore, cannot be present at elections, are entitled to representation. There may be something to be said for that. But there are many other classes which have just as much right to claim it. What constituency are you going to suggest? The proposal in practice cannot be put into operation. If you have doctors you will have to have lawyers; if you have lawyers, you will have to have merchants; if you have merchants you will have to have brewers; if you have brewers you will have to have distillers; if you have distillers you will have to have publicans; if you have publicans you would have to have temperance hotel-keepers. You have only to point out the impracticability of this proposal for it to appear to the House in its calm moments to be quite outside the field of practical politics.

It has been the fashion in this Debate to refer to the question of Female Suffrage, and I wish to state my position on that matter. I am a democrat, and I believe that a woman has interests, and that she has intelligence in some cases equal to and superior to that of man. [HON. MEMBERS: "NO, no."] I see that those Members who are against woman suffrage doubt that at once. It is, at any rate, my view. I am a modest man, and I am willing to agree that there are women as able and qualified to give a vote as myself. If a woman comes and asks me that she should have the right which I value, what can I in my generosity, fairness, chivalry, and gallantry say? I must say that she should have the vote on the same basis as men have it. That is my position. I shall, therefore, vote for adult suffrage, but if restrictions are put in, and an unfair line drawn between men and women, I shall part company. I would not give propertied women alone a vote. I believe the one solid, consistent, and serious basis upon which you can give woman suffrage at all is simply by disregarding the sex bar. Therefore, I shall vote for adult suffrage, but whether I shall vote for it in a modified form remains to be seen. I do not make any promise to myself or anybody else, but I shall listen to the arguments, and possibly I shall be convinced by some of them.

There is one other question I wish to refer to, one especially interesting to me, which, so far as I know, has not been introduced at all in the course of this Debate. It is an electoral reform I believe to be most important, namely, one day for all elections. I believe it is not only in the interests of politics generally, but of the business of the country that we should have all elections on one day. Let me point out that very often the spreading out of an election is a very serious handicap to a losing party. The pendulum which shows its swing on the first day gets increased force as the elections go on, and the drawing out of the election of 1906 had a most disastrous effect upon many Tory seats which were supposed to be safe. Each day the Tory ranks were disheartened; each day it was found harder to get out-voters to come up to the poll; each day the hopes and aspirations of the Liberals got higher, and a new and unexpected victory came in. In a case such as that of 1906 the principle of all elections being held on one day might have been of great advantage to the Tory party. As I believe the pendulum is still swinging in our favour—[HON. MEMBERS: "Where?"]—I offer this olive branch. It may not appear to be very valuable, but it is sincerely offered as a reform which will be good for the country and especially for the Tory party. It is not at the present time sufficiently understood that the law of our land does not enable us to have a General Election in less than seven weeks. That is the minimum time. First of all, there must be a certain time between the issue of the writs and notice, a further time between notice and nominations, and then a further time between nominations and elections. Parliament cannot meet until the whole House of Commons is constituted. In case of certain constituencies, SUCH as Orkney and Shetland and the Wick Burghs, these times are Statute extended so long that it requires seven weeks from the time of the issue the writs before Parliament can assemble That is a ridiculous and unnecessary waste of time. There might be a great national crisis, there might be a time of foreign difficulty or internal confusion, in regard to which it might be to the great interests of the country to elect a Parliament quickly.

No.

The hon. Baronet says "No," but I think everybody else must say "Yes." Why should we in these days retain ancient provisions which were quite justified in the times when it took several days' coach journey to go from the South to the North of England? Is it right that we should extend the period in such manner that now we cannot have General Election under seven weeks? That alone is a great argument in favour of elections on one day. In conclusion, me ask hon. Members, in any further marks they may have to make upon the Bill here or elsewhere, to rest assured that, at all events, there are some of on this side of the House who do not want to get a party advantage out of it. We believe our programme, our policy, and the way we have of presenting our proposals to the country, are strong enough We do not want to obliterate all our opponents. We want them to have a fair share of representation in this House, and, personally, I am not supporting this I because I believe that by it I shall make my seat more secure, or the position of my party more entrenched, but because believe it to be entirely just and demand by the people.

The hon. Member who has just sat down has given us some very interesting prophecies, and almost some declarations of policy, especially with regard to the introduction of the Redistribution Bill. He has told us that shall have a Redistribution Bill before the end of this Parliament. I do not know that we on this side feel any more confident that that policy is any more likely be carried out. He has told us that this Bill is not being opposed on its merits by anybody on this side of the House. Speaking for myself, I am going to vote against it on its merits, and I will tell him why. It is agreed upon both sides that the state of representation in this House is entirely unsatisfactory. That must be obvious to anyone who considers the matter for a moment. When you have a constituency, such as Romford, with 50,000 electors, sending one Member to this Parliament, and a small constituency in Ireland, with 1,500 electors, also sending a representative, the vote of each Member counting the same, it is idle to say that the people of these Islands are properly represented in this Parliament. If you are going to do away with anomalies, no other is so objectionable as that I have mentioned, and that is one reason why I object to the Bill on its merits, because it does not deal with the most pressing anomaly. The hon. Member (Mr. King) said he did not want to injure his opponents. I want to know why he wants to abolish the representation of universities. He has given us a most interesting history about the origin of university representation. All I can say is, if he is accurate—and I have no doubt he is—in his statement that university representation was started in 1601, it was not started by King James I., because he did not come to the throne until 1603. If he is accurate in his statement that it was introduced in 1601, he must be altogether wrong as regards the person by whom it was introduced and the purposes for which it was introduced. But that is ancient history. I do not think anyone will deny that the universities have sent to this House men who have been not only most useful, but most distinguished Members of Parliament. It would be most invidious to refer to any hon. Gentleman sitting in this House at present, but, on the spur of the moment, could anyone think of a more representative, useful, and distinguished Member than the late Mr. Butcher? I cannot imagine any reason for doing away with the representation of universities at present, no matter what their origin may be.

I think the main object of this Bill, as has been confessed by hon. Gentlemen opposite, is the abolition of plural voting. Certainly the hon. Baronet (Sir C. Henry) said quite openly he would be quite content if the Bill did nothing else than abolish plural voting. If that is the main object, the intention of hon. Members is to damage their opponents. I, for one, believe in plural voting, and I believe it can be defended upon principle quite easily. As long as you have constituencies, and as long as Members are sent to Parliament to represent a particular constituency, I cannot imagine why you should not have plural voting. A man is Sent to Parliament to represent his constituency and all the interests in that constituency. Why should not a man who has an interest in a constituency vote simply because he has an interest in another constituency. He may be one of the most important men in it, and his opinion may be thought a great deal of by the people living in it. He is the kind of man who would be met with on every public occasion in the constituency, and yet he is not entitled to vote in it, because he happens to have a residence in another constituency. There seems to me no sense in it at all. Another reason can be adduced for supporting plural voting. I do not understand how anyone can say that one vote is exactly of the same value as another. It seems to me to be just the other way about. It would be a very desirable thing if you could give a proper value to the vote of a man of great experience. Take such a man as the late Mr. Gladstone. Does anyone suggest that his vote ought to be held to be of the same value as that of a man who can only make a cross on the paper or that of a man who will not take the trouble to cross the road to vote unless he is fetched? It is absurd! You cannot have one vote of exactly the same value as another. Plural voting is a rough and ready way of giving a proper value to a man's vote. It would be a very good thing if it were practical, but I do not think it is, to have everyone examined and put in different classes, so that a man who is in the first class would get more votes than the man at the bottom. Of course, that is not practicable, but it is practicable to give a man a vote in every constituency where he has the proper qualification.

The hon. Member (Mr. Helme) said the public have a right to the vote. I do not think he is quite right there. I do not think it has ever been the rule in this country that a man has a right to a vote simply because he has attained any particular age or walks on two legs, or because he lives in this country. The principle has always been that a man shall not have that great privilege until he has shown himself in some way or other qualified to have it. The qualification which we have at present is that he should either be a householder or an owner or occupier of part of the house. That is a rough and ready way of showing that a man has attained a position qualifying him to have the vote. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Burns) yesterday said, "We want to see that every man who is a head of the household shall have a vote." That is just the man who does get a vote at present. If you carry out this Bill you will not give the vote necessarily to men who are heads of families or householders. You give it to anyone who has attained a certain age and who can show that he has resided in the constituency for six months. A tramp who has resided in any constituency for six months will get a vote, and this Bill is doing exactly the opposite of what the right hon. Gentleman said he desired. If the object of the Bill were merely to remove electoral anomalies no one would be more willing to support it than I would, because there are many matters which might be put right. Why is it that you are going to extend the franchise to 3,000,000 people? Is there any demand for it? I certainly have come across no evidence of it. I have discussed this matter with my Constituents, and other people's constituents, and my experience is that in their opinion the present qualification for the vote is low enough. You will find on all hands, I quite agree, complaints about the difficulty of getting upon the register, and of the hardships which occur when a man changes his residence. I admit that it is very hard lines that a workman when he leaves one constituency and goes to another very likely loses the chance of voting, because he may not have time to go back and vote. It may take the best part of eighteen months before he gets on to the register in another constituency.

Sometimes it is two years.

Yes, it is sometimes two years. That is a thing that could be easily remedied by a very simple Bill. That is the kind of thing I should like to see done. Such injustices and anomalies I should be very glad indeed to see put right, but when I take the proposal to extend the franchise to about 3,000,000 people when there is no real demand for it, or no demand at all, I object to it. I think the Government know, as we know, that they are losing their own supporters in the country. The middle class, who ought to be supporters of a Liberal Government, throughout the country are no their supporters any longer, and the Government know it is as well as we do. There is evidence of it every day in every constituency, and therefore the Government declining in popularity with their own friends, desire, if they can, to put some other people on the register who may support them.

May I, with the leave of the House, correct a mistake I made in saying that James I. in 1601 instituted university representation? I know perfectly well that it was in 1603. It was by a mere slip I stated it was in 1601. Perhaps I ma explain why I said 1601. The fact was running in my mind that in 1801 Dublin University first received representation in this House.

Whatever difference of opinion there may be—and there is some—as to whether this House is deteriorating, I am sure any of us who had the privilege of being present at the be ginning of our proceedings to-day must have felt very much that there was no sign of deterioration in the speeches wit which the Debate was opened. Personally. I should have been very glad for man reasons to have left our case as state from this bench by my right hon. Friend (Mr. Balfour), and I am sure any right hon. Gentleman opposite would have been willing to leave his case in the hands of the Prime Minister. In introducing this Bill the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Education (Mr. Pease) gave as one of its merits its simplicity. We have not yet come to the Committee stage, but that there is anything simple about the Bill except the title no one will pretend an longer. I am perfectly certain that everyone in all quarters of the House recognise that there was need for some simplification of our electoral law, but it is quit obvious that one of the things most needed is to try to keep down expense in connection with the running of elections, and this at least is certain, that the result of this Bill, if it is carried, will be that the expense of registration, which means a addition to what in the long run has to be paid by candidates, will be enormously increased. I have taken the trouble, not by studying it myself, but by communication with some of my friends, to find out ho it will work, and I am told by one of the officials in our central organisation who has studied the question, and is well competent to speak upon it, that it will mean that the cost of registration all over to our party will be at least four or five times as great as it is at present. And that is not all. I am informed in the same way that the Bill as it stands, or with any amendment one can reasonably think of, will be, if not unworkable, practically unworkable.

I do not want to go into details, but perhaps I may refer to one matter. There is going to be what is called a continuous register. Suppose there is an election in the immediate future, every agent of every party would scour the country to get hold of new voters who would support his candidate. A list would be drawn up at the end of the month, and any person could object to any person on the list. If there was an election immediately, everybody practically would be objected to. What happens? They cannot be put on the list at the end of August or the beginning of September, because the cases have to be tried by the County Courts in August. The County Courts are quite incapable of dealing with the cases which would be presented to them. They are congested already. Take the case of London. There are something like sixty Revising Barristers' Courts which do nothing else but registration work. There are only fourteen County Courts. The result would be that the thing could not be settled in time, and the election would be over before these people could get on the register. We must admit at least that if the Government really want to make a change in the law from the point of view of making it more reasonable, they ought to have gone about it in a different way. There is another consideration in connection with machinery which I wish to put before the House. The new leaders of the Liberal party, the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Wedgwood) and the hon. Member who won—well, not a victory, but sustained a moral defeat in a qualified way in Norfolk—have developed a new programme in Staffordshire at this moment. Among other items, according to what I read of in the papers, it includes the abolition of the Increment Duty, which will be very gratifying, I am sure, to many electors there, whatever it may be to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Among other items they promised to transfer a great part of the burden borne by local rates to the central Exchequer. That is the new policy, but the old gang represented by the Treasury Bench are at their old game. While they are promising relief to local rates they are actually by this Bill throwing a new and very heavy burden on local rates in connection with it. How heavy it is was indicated the other day by the hon. Member for St. Pancras. No one will doubt that if the Bill ever comes into operation it will add very seriously to the burden of local rates. I am going to speak—I cannot say of the higher aspects of the Bill, because it has not got any—but of some of the broader considerations connected with it.

Hon. Members who are listening to me have, of course, very clearly in their minds two speeches from that bench, one the speech of the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Pease) who introduced it, and the other the speech of the Colonial Secretary (Mr. Harcourt), on the Second Reading. There was a most remarkable contrast between these speeches and the reception which was given to them. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Pease) went through his laborious task in a most serious, and I venture to say, most efficient way, but as he developed the different phases of this proposal he was greeted with a loud expression of mirth from every quarter of the House and he showed that he himself was not devoid of humour by joining in it, though not with the same enthusiasm as other Members. The Colonial Secretary made a different kind of speech, containing a great many of those lighter touches which we like to see from him. But they did not arrest so much attention as the serious speech of the right hon. Gentleman opposite. They did not come off; it was not his fault; it was the fault of the atmosphere. But by far the most humorous remark was one where the humour was quite unintentional. Referring to one particular part of the Bill, he told us in the most serious way that the Government had taken adequate steps to guard against gerrymandering, and he said this in quite a serious way in regard to a Bill the whole object of which is to gerrymander the electorate in the interests of the party opposite. Nobody has any doubt about that. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] As my right hon. Friend the Member for the City (Mr. Balfour) said to-day, it is frankly partisan. Political parties are not free from partisan considerations. I think that all political parties are inclined to weigh the scales a little bit in their own favour, and if there is any doubt to give themselves the benefit of the doubt. But there is this difference here: they make no concealment about it. They do not even cover the proceedings with that veil of decency which is generally supposed to be necessary in such circumstances.

4.0 P.M.

As my hon. Friend who spoke last has pointed out, by a change in the electorate the Government may possibly gain, and they cannot possibly lose. They know, and every by-election which has taken place for the last six months shows, that they have absolutely lost the confidence of the electors. They must, therefore, at all costs, change the jury. The one thing they dare not do is to face the jury which they have at present. Consider the Circumstances in which this Bill is introduced. It is introduced at a time when there is not a man in the House who does not believe that it is impossible for us adequately to consider the proposals already before the House of Commons. Why is this done? There is no difference of opinion about it. It is done in order to get the value of the Parliament Act. It will operate just as well after a General Election. Why rush all this legislation so as to get it before the General Election? There is only one reason; they have lost the confidence of the electorate, and they wish to carry these measures in spite of the electorate. That is fairly obvious, and is rather striking from a party which, we remember from the hoardings, at the last election told electors that what they were fighting for was that the will of the people must prevail. But even taking their own Parliament Act, the force of habit is so inveterate that they cannot run straight in connection with it. Look at the circumstances in which this Bill is introduced. It is going to be read a second time tonight, but when are we to hear anything more about it? Will the right hon. Gentleman who is going to speak after me tell us that it is going through its other stages this year? Of course it cannot. Then what happens? The Second Reading is taken now in order to get the benefit of the Parliament Act for a measure which is not to be discussed until next year. In other words, when hon. Gentlemen told us—and nobody more often than the Prime Minister—that one essential condition of the Parliament Act was that there would be two years in which the force of public opinion could act, they deliberately so arranged that there could only be one and a half years at the very outside in which this condition would exist.

There is one advantage in the way in which the Government are using this measure; that is, they have shown that they have absolutely no scruple with regard to anything in the letter of it, and they cannot expect us not to use any method which will within the letter of the Bill help to defeat their purpose. But there is something stronger in this proposal even than that. The Bill is arranged in this extraordinary way, that the question of woman suffrage may or may not form part of it. That would be discussed next year also, I presume, and this great question, which was never before the electorate, put forward by this Government, is going to be decided as I have stated. The late Lord Chancellor, in the presence, if I am not mistaken, of a good many of his colleagues, stated that to use the machinery of the Parliament Act in any circumstances to pass such a Bill would be a constitutional outrage. They are ready to perpetrate that outrage; I am not going to speak about the merits of this question. There is great difference of opinion on both sides of the House, and I think I am in a minority among my own friends in regard to it. I am prepared to vote for a modified extension of the suffrage to women. I should oppose utterly as not only unreasonable, but ludicrous in view of our past history any proposal to add something like 10,000,000 women to the register. The Prime Minister feels much more strongly on this subject than I do. He says that to enfranchise women would be a national disaster. At the same time he tells us if the House of Commons wants a national disaster, "very well, I am ready to give it." Such complacency is new. I do not think from the earliest days of our political history such a pinnacle, or if you like such a depth, of political opportunity has ever been reached by any right hon. Gentleman. With that adroitness which he possesses with other greater qualities, he never touched this aspect. He met the speech of my right hon. Friend by saying that the House of Commons would stultify itself by adding woman suffrage to this Bill. That is very pleasant for him.

But suppose it does? Then the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister points to us and says, "There is a difference of opinion there, and, if ever that party deals with the franchise, they will deal with it in the same way." Please Heaven! No. I do not say with the Pharisees that we are better than other men, but I am perfectly sure that we would not do it now, and I am equally sure that six years ago the Prime Minister would not have done it either. I cannot speak as to the future, but it has required quite a long and severe training to bring him to this point. If we do undergo the same training, and are to be subjected to the same temptation, we might yield ignominiously, but I do hope that we shall never be subjected to the temptation; but, if we are, I hope we will be strong enough to withstand it. I have said that this whole Bill is entirely partisan. One of the best proofs of that is in regard to university representation. I am not going to speak at length on the advantages of university representation, which has already been dealt with by my right hon. Friend. But the answer given by the Prime Minister to-day did not meet the question at all. He pointed out that educated people, people with degrees, graduates of universities, are politicians, and that they sometimes vote against distinguished men who sit for those universities because of their political views on particular questions. That is quite true. But the value of university representation in my opinion is this: that it does bring into this House a class of men who could not come here under any other conditions; and who do add not only dignity but distinction to this House. I quite admit that in these days whether we like it or not, we must all be democratic. My views are quite distinctly marked and I am not afraid to give expression to them.

I do believe that political power must largely rest and ought to rest, with the working classes, but universal experience shows that no class can have an absolute monopoly of power without acting in such a way as to be detrimental to the welfare of the country. That is just as true of the working classes as of any other class. People may say that they are different from the various oligarchies which have held power in this country—the landed class, or the middle class, because they are so numerous that their interests are really the interests of the country. That is true. But then unfortunately people cannot always distinguish between their apparent and their real interest, and nothing in my mind is more certain than this, that if you have monopoly of power in that class or any other, it will be used in such a way as to be of disadvantage to the nation, and therefore of the working classes more than any other class. That being so, surely there is no reason for rushing in and getting rid of these nine Members who represent a new element, and an element which is of great value to this House. But even from the point of view of the Government themselves, why do they do it in this Bill? That question does not touch the point of representation, and it is really more a question of redistribution. They rush in in this indecent haste, in a first attempt to deal with the franchise. Does any hon. Gentleman opposite believe for a moment that if that party had got sufficient representatives, that any such proposal would have been put before the House? It has not always been as it is now, and the Liberal party have in my time had more than their share of this representation, and that is a consideration even to us, and certainly ought to give cause for thought to hon. Gentlemen opposite. It is a melancholy consideration that the indecent haste with which this reform is going to be made is due to no other cause than this, that the Government have made up their minds that in future they cannot hope ever to have the support of the educated classes in the community. Of course, the main object of the Bill is to do away with plural voting, and the reason that that is the main object is because hon. Gentlemen opposite think it will improve their prospects at the next election. The Prime Minister told us—and I believed him absolutely—"I am not influenced by questions of theory. I am influenced by the severest practical considerations." He said, "I do not object to anomalies, as such, at all." He only objects to anomalies which tell against him, and likes those which are in his favour. Just look at this from the point of view of the principle on which this Bill is framed. The Government really cannot pretend, and I hope the Solicitor-General will not pretend, that this plural voting is the greatest anomaly, and that they are removing it because it is the greatest anomaly. I really hope he will not pretend that. It is not the greatest anomaly, and they know it is not the greatest anomaly, but it is an anomaly which tells against them. From their own point of view, why do they object to plural voting. It is because one man has a larger share of political power than another, and they think that is unfair. Precisely the same principle applies, and applies far more strongly, to redistribution. Suppose I had two votes, one in the constituency which I represent, and in which I think there are something like 25,000 electors, and another in the City of London; even in that case my share of political power would not be anything like half as much as that of an elector in the constituency of the hon. Member for Pontefract (Mr. Booth). I know that the Colonial Secretary, by selecting a particular constituency and comparing it with some other constituency on this side, showed that in some cases redistribution would help them. There are, of course, cases, but, on the whole, it would tell against them, and they know it. [HON. MEMBERS: "NO, no."] Do not let us have any pretence in this House whatever we do outside. There is only one truth which I will give, and it is quite sufficient. If redistribution did not tell against them there would have been a Redistribution Bill before the House.

I am going to say a word about the question of Irish redistribution. Hon. Gentlemen opposite have said that Parliament has no moral right to reduce the representation of Ireland in proportion to its population. That is a contention which, in my opinion, cannot stand a moment's impartial examination. What are the facts? At the time of the Act of Union Ireland was given and accepted Members in this House which represented somewhere between a third and a half of the Members she was entitled to according to population. Can anyone contend for a moment that we are breaking the spirit of that Act when we give them not a half or a third of what they are entitled to, but their full share in proportion to their population? Even if you take the letter of the Act of Union, we would have the right to increase the numbers from the other parts of the country, so that Ireland with her present number would have only her share in proportion to the population. That argument was used by my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. Pretyman) the other day, and the Under-Secretary for India, who is not really so obtuse on this subject as he tried to make us believe, thought that that argument meant that we must increase the Membership of this House to something like 900 Members. Is anything more obvious than that, if we have the right to make the numbers proportionate to the population, and it is expedient to have a smaller House of Commons, we have a right to carry it out by having a smaller House of Commons in proportion to the population? But the hon. Member apparently was not shamming entirely when he used that argument, because he seems to disagree with me now. Let me put it another way. There are some people, and I am not sure that I am not one of them, who believe that our numbers are too large. Suppose it was decided to reduce this House by one-half, or something like that. Does the hon. Member contend that we should still have to keep 100 Irish Members? If not, it is obvious that there is no force in his argument.

Then we are told that it is part of a treaty. That is a curious argument coming from the party which disestablished the Irish Church. I have looked—not today, in connection with this Debate, but on previous occasions—at the Act of Union. The question of the 100 Members was not treated in the Act in any way differently from all the other questions, many of which have been since dealt with. The question of the established Church was not put in any different way, and was regarded as binding for all time. But they tell us that that Article was abrogated by the consent of the Irish representatives. On whose behalf was that article inserted in the Act of Union? It was inserted on behalf, not of the majority, but of the minority. How can you pretend that you have got consent to its abrogation unless you get it from the representatives of the minority on whose behalf it was put in? One Gentleman on that bench—I think it was the Under-Secretary for India—said that no one but a dishonourable man could make this change. Then when the time comes I shall be a dishonourable man. If ever the time comes when I am sitting on that bench as a Member of a Government, I shall use whatever influence I have in that Government to remove a most glaring anomaly, and an anomaly the removal of which, in my belief, would be a beneficent reform both for Ireland and for Great Britain. When that reform has taken place there will be no one who will rejoice so much as the Gentlemen who now sit on that bench, for they will no longer be under, and they will be glad to be relieved from, the obligation of having their policy dictated to them by the Gentlemen who sit below the Gangway.

That redistribution is an essential part of franchise reform is admitted by the Government. The Colonial Secretary, with that engaging simplicity which we find so often in his speeches, but which I do not think is the fundamental basis of his character, said to us, "We intend, and we hope that the Opposition will believe it, though we do not expect them to do so, to carry redistribution before the next election." He was wise not to expect it and foolish to hope it. We have had experience. We immediately gave the right hon. Gentleman a chance of showing how much sincerity there was in that declaration. He was asked by my hon. Friend, "Will you insert a Clause providing that this Bill shall not come into operation until redistribution has taken place?" Oh, no, the obligation must be in a different form from that! Well, we here had experience, as I say, before. We know of one reform that the Prime Minister said would not brook delay. It has suffered some delay. He said it was a debt of honour. The debt has not been paid. And the right hon. Gentleman offers us another guarantee of the same character. I say to him that the security is not good enough. If it is too much to expect—as it is—that the Government will pay debts of honour which are no longer convenient—if that is too much to expect—we have at least the right to ask that from a sense of decency they will refrain from incurring other obligations of the same kind and until the first is paid.

The right hon. Gentleman has complained of the circumstances in which this Bill is introduced, and he has further complained, that when introduced at all, redistribution does not form an integral part of it. I wish in the few moments I propose to occupy, to deal with these two complaints, because they form, I think, the head and front of the criticism on the Bill. In the first place he complains that the Bill is introduced at all. He says, following in this language used by some other hon. Members, that the Bill is frankly partisan. Will the House observe if in the view of the Conservative party a Bill which aims at abolishing plural voting is frankly partisan, if it deserves this wealth of indignant denunciation, what follows? Does it not follow by their own admission that the continuance of a system of plural voting is an anomaly which operates entirely in their own interests and which they cannot defend on its merits? I know that some speakers on the opposite side have endeavoured to supply an argument for the plural voter as such. It is not a very easy argument to maintain, but one admires the ingenuity and courage with which it is even now put forward. I say, in the first place, any party which denounces a Bill for getting rid of plural voting as frankly partisan is thereby committed to this simple proposition, that the existence of the plural voter as an integral part of our franchise system is, by its own admission, an unjustifiable preference which is exploited in the interests of that party.

What is the other main complaint which the right hon. Gentleman put forward? He says if you are going to introduce this Bill at all, why is not redistribution put forward? I am glad that question should be put, because I do not in the least wish to shirk the answer, and the true answer. I agree with the right hon. Gentleman, there is no reason to be reticent on this matter. I will tell him with perfect frankness the reason as I understand it; it is this: Everybody agree that you have about as much to do this Session as can reasonably be done. I do not understand that anyone seriously suggests that the addition of redistribution would increase the probability of the passage of this Bill this year. But we intend that the franchise reform, including the abolition of the plural voter, shall become law in the course of the next two years, and we intend to use the Parliament Act for that purpose; and we have some right to use that Act if we need its assistance. Plural voting was the very first subject which was dealt with by a Government measure in 1906. At that time the majority which Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman had behind him was one which could not be criticised as some people criticise our majority at the present moment.

Will the right hon. Gentleman forgive me? Does he remember that Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman said that his franchise proposals must be accompanied by a full measure of redistribution?

I think the hon. Gentleman will see that I am not going to forget that. Coming back to what I was saying, I may remind the House that we have some reason to use the Parliament Act, because the very first proposal in 1906, which passed through this House, and went to the House of Lords, was a measure for abolishing plural voting. It was passed by majorities which I believe are without parallel in the history of recent controversial legislation in this House, and it was that measure which in a few hours was destroyed by the House of Lords. We do not intend that to happen again, and when hon. Gentlemen opposite approve and accept the statement that we intend to use the Parliament Act in order to carry it, I make note of the fact that their indignation is more significant since they think there is plenty of time for that Act to operate. The right hon. Gentleman asked why we do not include redistribution? I will tell the right hon. Gentleman. If he will undertake that in this year the House of Lords will carry the Franchise Bill, including redistribution, he shall have it. But we have no intention of preventing the passage of the Franchise Bill because of the objection that it has got too much within its scope, and is overloaded. As for redistribution proposals I point out this to the House, and to the right hon. Gentleman: The time will come when redistribution proposals in this Parliament can be offered to the House of Lords on these terms—the abolition of plural voting that must come; the reform of the franchise, that shall come, but it is for you, the House of Lords, and the Conservative party to choose whether it shall come with one vote one value or without one vote one value.

Does the right hon. Gentleman mean he has no sense of duty as to the justice of the proposals?

I hope we should not put forward redistribution proposals unless we thought they were just. The question is whether on these proposals, just as we think them, the House of Lords is prepared to use its powers of delaying and its limited powers of destruction in order to prevent redistribution coming into operation at the time we intend, namely, in 1914. That is the answer I venture to make to the right hon. Gentleman when he asks why we do not introduce redistribution proposals in our Bill. It seems to be supposed that there is some unwillingness on this side of the House to secure a proper redistribution scheme. If there is any Member of this House who has some reason to know whether it is wanted or not it is myself. I agree with the right hon. Gentleman it is unfortunate that we should bandy words too much as to whether it is to the advantage of this party or of the party opposite. While that is so it clearly is not a fact that the existing disproportion of the size of constituencies in Great Britain is a disproportion which can be said to turn in favour of those who at this time put forward these franchise proposals unaccompanied by redistribution. As regards the case of Ireland, I confess I was interested in the prophecy of the right hon. Gentleman as to his future occupation of this bench. He told us that in certain events he would become a dishonourable man, but that is quite an impossible event. The event was that he should find himself sitting on this bench, and if that happened he should become a dishonourable man and reduce the number of those representing Ireland in this House. He need not trouble, he need not worry about that. The Home Rule Bill will do that. It is very gratifying to us to feel that in addition to the other proposals in that measure there is one at least which will save the right hon. Gentleman from a situation which I am sure he and all his Friends would be the first to deplore. The only difference between that which he adumbrates in the event of a hypothetical want of honour and good faith and that which we are doing is that we know what the Conservative party means by redistribution in Ireland. What was the last proposal made by a Conservative Administration in this House in the great cause of the franchise and redistribution? It was this: In the face of the Act of Union, and without the assent of the majority of the Irish people, there should be a substantial reduction of Irish Members in this House. The right hon. Gentleman went through various illustrations of the rule of three and asked whether we did not agree with him. This, however, is not a case of arithmetical juggling, but it is a very plain matter. The treaty embodied in the Act of Union, whatever else it did or did not do, did not promise that the Irish Members should be 100, but 100 out of 600, and no honourable man could possibly put any other construction on it at the time it was passed. I agree that difficulties might conceivably arise, but we seek to adjust them by the Home Rule Bill which will get rid of these difficulties. No man who desires seriously to apply the principles of the Act of Union, and no Unionist who regards it as his ark of the covenant could say that as 100 representatives are provided for Ireland, then alter the numbers for Great Britain and make it 1,000. That form of arithmetic is not the form that will stand examination. Now I come to the two main matters of complaint in this Bill and the two matters of defence which hon. Members opposite have set up. There is the plural voter on the one hand and the university voter on the other.

Take the university voter first. I am not speaking in language of affectation, and I certainly should be the last in this House to deny the tremendous service which universities have bestowed upon those whose fortune it is to go there. If I did that I should think myself a very ungenerous son of a generous mother. The very fact that that is true, the very circumstance that the man who has the good fortune of enjoying a university education may get much from it, is in my judgment a reason why he need be under no alarm as to the share of political power he exercises in the democracy. Is it really to be said, as was said by the Member for the University of Oxford yesterday, that higher education, the interests of science, the interests of the higher professional studies, have no means of getting representation in this House except through a university? I do not know whether the law is regarded as one of the higher professional studies, but it does not look as though university representation is necessary for the representation of that profession in this House. When the right hon. Gentleman made that observation he did not mean you had an electorate which in terms represented those elements, because he went on to say Labour has got its representation, wealth has got its, and land has got its. It has only got it in the sense that every person with political privilege and right is naturally concerned to consider and anxious to express in his vote that which he knows best about, and that which touches closest his own experience and life. I submit, and I think this House shows it, that, however democratic our institutions may be, if a university training, if a university association is anything which adds value to a man, and for my part I think it does, then that man is in no danger of failing to have his full influence on public affairs in a democratic country. If, on the other hand, as I know some hon. Gentlemen may think, a university education makes a man crabbed, and at all events prevents him seeing what really are the problems of his age and generation, then there is no argument for giving special representation to universities as such. So far as university representation is concerned, there is this further answer. The right hon. Gentleman says: "Why do you put it in this Bill? The rest of your redistribution proposal is coming on another day. Then why do you endeavour to destroy university seats by this Bill?" I will tell him. This is a Bill which confers the vote upon people who reside or who occupy in the constituency. The electors in a university constituency are neither residents nor occupiers; they have nothing to do with the locality. I think the hon. Member for the Glasgow and Aberdeen Universities (Sir H. Craik) explained that one of his constituents lives in North China. It may be a very nice place to live in, but I know no reason why a resident in North China should vote for the British House of Commons. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why not?"] Hon. Members say, "Why not?" Then is every other person in North China of British descent to vote for the British House of Commons? Why should it be only the person in North China of British origin who happens to be a graduate of Aberdeen University who has a vote in choosing Members of this House and every other Englishman have none? The real reason, of course—it is not really the least surprising—why in this Bill, though frankly a Franchise Bill and not a Redistribution Bill, you provide that university seats shall be extinguished and university Members shall no longer come here as such, is that there will be no electors. The moment you say the people who have a right to vote must be resident in the place or occupy land or property in that place, obviously and automatically the university representatives must disappear, because university seats are not composed on that basis at all.

Now take the plural voter. Even at this hour, after three days' Debate, with the Division pending in a few moments, I am really not certain whether the view of hon. Gentlemen opposite is that the plural voter is defensible or indefensible. I gather some of them think, at any rate, the problem of the plural voter undoubtedly calls for reform.

No.

The hon. Baronet for the City of London takes a different view, but I have observed before that if he takes a particular view it does not follow that the Members of his party take the same view. I pay that tribute to his independence of character in that regard, but I do not think his denial will satisfy me. The Conservative party, as a whole, is not prepared to defend the plural voter. The security, if I may use the expression, is not quite good enough; and indeed, of course, the plural voter as he exists in this country is absolutely indefensible. I could understand the principle of a franchise by which you endeavour to give people political power in proportion to their wealth: it would be logical and quite easy to understand, although I could not agree with it, because it would be weighting the scales exactly where they need least weight. But how can it be logical that a man who owns a whole county which constitutes one constituency should have but one vote, while another man who owns ten small houses in ten different constituencies should have ten votes? How is it logical if a man who owns a business and lives elsewhere should have two votes, while if he converts the business into a company be gets only the vote for his residence? There is no conceivable way of justifying it. I would rather judge by the test which we in this House are now bound to apply. As the right hon. Gentleman opposite said, after all we live under a democratic system, and plural voting as it exists to-day is an absolute anomaly. The argument is that a person of additional substance and with additional interests should have further representation in our political system than his less fortunate fellow citizen. If the object of this House is to try and make good laws, the matter is of far greater importance to the poor man than to the rich. If the object is to devise wise taxes the tax is of greater moment to the humble householder than to the large householder. After all, are we not in great danger of misconceiving the whole principle on which democracy is based. The real ultimate political influence is not merely a matter of counting heads. If you want to make men feel that they have a real responsibility in Government you must treat each one alike and having treated each man alike the man with the greater intelligence and greater power of organisation prevails in our political system. He has always prevailed, and he will always do so. When one is told that that is proceeding on the assumption that one man is as wise as another, I admit if we were proceeding on that assumption that it would be foolish. The real proposition is this: It might be well if you could pick out the wise men of the country and confer on them a greater part of the political power. But you cannot do it; you certainly cannot do it by choosing university graduates. Even if you could do it the system would be bad because then you would fail to give to the ordinary citizen the feeling that he has just as great a personal responsibility for the Government as anybody else. You cannot by some fanciful arrangement get an ideally good Government, and we had therefore better be content with a proposition that suggests equality in these matters. Seeing it is impossible to differentiate in matters of political wisdom as between one man and another, you must treat all alike and see that they start with a complete sense of equality in the State.

This Bill effects three objects which I do not believe anybody in this House will dare to denounce on any public platform. In the first place, it endeavours to secure that the man who has a vote has it given to him for some simple qualification which anybody can understand. It endeavours to get rid of a system by which one man has a vote because he has a latchkey, and another man has not got a vote because his landlord lives in the same house; whereby one man has got a vote because he lives in lodgings which, unfurnished, are held to be worth more than so many shillings a week, and another man has not got a vote because he has crossed the street within the last twelve months. It gets rid of these anomalies, which everyone knows are ridiculous, and substitutes a single, simple system.

The hon. Baronet the Member for Oxford University (Sir William Anson) said he would like to examine the Schedule to see how much was repealed. He has the prospect of a happy long vacation before him. I have been through the Statutes which are repealed, and if we pass this Bill, we shall get rid of this great volume of registration laws, and shall substitute for it the simple test, "Where do you reside; and have you resided there for six months? If you have, then you have got a vote." In the second place, we secure that a man shall not lose his vote merely because he changes his address. If he changes his address, the rate collector will follow him; if he changes his address the tax collector will follow him; and if he changes his address, and there is cause for it, the policeman will follow him. The only thing that does not follow him, under the existing law, is his vote. That appears to us to be an unnecessary absurdity, and one which can be got rid of by a simple system of continuous registration. In the third place, we get rid of an anomaly which no one can justify. The number of votes a man has does not depend upon any intelligible principle or any test which can be justified in logic. It may not be that all citizens of this country will be equally wise in the exercise of political power, but, at any rate, they will have self-government. It is for these reasons that we ask the House to give this Bill a Second Reading.

rose in his place, and claimed to move, "That the Question be now put."

Question put, "That the Question be now put."

The House divided: Ayes, 284; Noes, 216.

Question put accordingly, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."

The House divided: Ayes, 290; Noes,218.

Main Question put, and agreed to.

Bill read a second time; and committed to a Committee of the Whole House for Monday next, 15th July.

I have given consideration to the strong representations that have been made for more time for Finance. In my statement on Wednesday I had suggested one day, Monday next, for the Second Reading of the Finance Bill. I propose to give a second day for that stage, and we will therefore take the Division on Wednesday instead of Monday.

I am not without hope that it may still be possible to conclude all necessary financial business in time to permit of the House rising by Saturday, 3rd August, but I will be guided by the progress of business in the meantime.

On Tuesday we shall take the Army Estimates, Territorial Vote.

Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will put me a question early next week as to the business to be taken on Thursday and Friday.

Question put, and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at Twelve minutes after Five o'clock till Monday next, 15th instant.