Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub

Mr. Grey observed, that the order, if at all to be regarded, related only to private petitions, and that, although the signatures in this case were subjoined to a printed petition, yet it did not appear that the petition had been circulated.

Mr. Fox said, that he could not go the length of saying that the House were not bound by any orders made during the usurpation; but in this case there was no standing order. The reason and sense of the thing did not so much apply to a petition coming to the House in print, as to the fact, whether it had been previously printed and circulated. It was notorious, however, that almost in every private bill the petitions were printed and often advertised in the newspapers, before they came to be presented to the House. In his opinion negative precedents were of Tittle consequence, and he would therefore give his vote for bringing up the pe

tition.

[blocks in formation]

That the House of Lords consists of lords spiritual and temporal, deriving their titles and consequence either from the Crown, or from hereditary privileges

That these two powers, if they acted without control, would form either a despotic monarchy, or a dangerous oligarchy. trived that these authorities may be rendered not only harmless, but beneficial, and be exercised for the security and happiness of the people.

That the wisdom of our ancestors hath con

That this security and happiness are to be looked for in the introduction of a third estate, distinct from, and a check upon, the other two branches of the legislature; created by, representing, and responsible to, the people

themselves.

That so much depending upon the preserMr. Burke explained, that, in his opi-vation of this third estate, in such its constinion, the petition coming printed before tutional purity and strength, your petitioners the House made a material difference, be- are reasonably jealous of whatever may ap cause many things might be done abroad, pear to vitiate the one or to impair the other. out of that House, which they could not be acquainted with.

That at the present day the House of Commons does not fully and fairly represent the Mr. Pitt thought the House could not people of England, which consistently with suffer the petition to be brought up with-ciples of the constitution, they consider as a what your petitioners conceive to be the prinout departing from usage. It had been grievance, and therefore, with all becoming said, that many of the petitions had come respect, lay their complaints before your hofrom the same shop; and had this mode nourable House. been conceived to be regular and proper, it would, no doubt, have been adopted with regard to other petitions, and they would probably have come from the same press. With regard to publishing petitions in the newspapers, the House perhaps might be ignorant of its having been done, and it might have been done without the knowledge of the parties. Upon the whole, he must oppose the bringing up the petition.

Mr. Sheridan was of opinion that the petition ought to be received; but at the same time, as it seemed a little doubtful, and in order that the important business which was to come on, might not be delayed, he was induced to wish that the motion for bringing up the petition should be withdrawn.

This was accordingly done.

Debate on Mr. Grey's Motion for a Reform in Parliament.] Mr. Grey then presented the following Petition, signed by the members of the society of The Friends of the People, associated for the purpose of obtaining a Parliamentary Reform:

That though the terms in which your petitioners state their grievance may be looked upon as strong, yet your honourable House is entreated to believe that no expression is made use of for the purpose of offence.

nourable House is not an adequate represen Your petitioners in affirming that your hotation of the people of England, do but state a fact, which, if the word "representation" be accepted in its fair and obvious sense, they are ready to prove, and which they think detrimental to their interests, and contrary to the spirit of the constitution.

How far this inadequate representation is apprehend they may be allowed to decide for prejudicial to their interests, your petitioners themselves; but how far it is contrary to the spirit of the constitution, they refer to the consideration of your honourable House.

If your honourable House shall be pleased to determine that the people of England ought not to be fully represented, your petitioners pray that such your determination may be made known, to the end that the peobut if your honourable House shall conceive ple may be apprized of their real situation; that the people are already fully represented, then your petitioners beg leave to call your attention to the following facts:

[ocr errors]

Your petitioners complain, that the number of representatives assigned to the different counties is grossly disproportioned to their comparative extent, population, and trade. Your petitioners complain, that the elective franchise is so partially and unequally distributed, and is in so many instances committed to bodies of men of such very limited numbers, that the majority of your honourable House, is elected by less than fifteen thousand electors, which, even if the male adults in the kingdom be estimated at so low a number as three millions, is not more than the two hundredth part of the people to be represented.

Your petitioners complain, that the right of voting is regulated by no uniform or rational principle.

Your petitioners complain, that the exercise of the elective franchise is only renewed once in seven years.

Your petitioners thus distinctly state the subject matter of their complaints, that your honourable House may be convinced that they are acting from no spirit of general discontent, and that you may with the more ease be enabled to inquire into the facts, and to apply the remedy.

For the evidence in support of the first complaint, your petitioners refer to the return book of your honourable House.-Is it fitting, that Rutland and Yorkshire should bear an equal rank in the scale of county representation; or can it be right, that Cornwall alone should, by its extravagant proportion of borough members, outnumber not only the representatives of Yorkshire and Rutland together, but of Middlesex added to them? Or, if a distinction be taken between the landed and the trading interests, must it not appear monstrous that Cornwall and Wiltshire should send more borough members to parliament, than Yorkshire, Lancashire, Warwickshire, Middlesex, Worcestershire, and Somersetshire united? and that the total representation of all Scotland should but exceed by one member, the number returned for a single county in England?

The second complaint of your petitioners, is founded on the unequal proportions in which the elective franchise is distributed, and in support of it,

They affirm, that in addition to the hundred and sixty so elected, thirty-seven more of your honourable members are elected by nineteen places, in none of which the number of voters exceeds one hundred. And this your petitioners are ready to prove.

They affirm, that in addition to the hundred and ninety-seven honourable members so chosen, fifty-two more are returned to serve in Parliament by twenty-six places, in none of which the number of voters exceed two hundred. And this your petitioners are ready to prove.

They affirm, that in addition to the two hundred and forty-nine so elected, twenty more are returned to serve in parliament for counties in Scotland, by less than one hundred electors each, and ten for counties in Scotland by less than two hundred and fifty each. And this your petitioners are ready to prove, even admitting the validity of fictitious votes.

They affirm, that in addition to the two hundred and seventy-nine so elected, thirteen districts of burghs of Scotland, not containing one hundred voters each, and two districts of burghs, not containing one hundred and twenty-five each, return fifteen more honourable members. And this your petitioners are ready to prove.

And in this manner, according to the present state of the representation, two hundred and ninety-four of your honourable members are chosen, and, being a majority of the entire House of Commons, are enabled to decide all questions in the name of the whole people of England and Scotland.

The third complaint of your petitioners is founded on the present complicated rights of voting. From the caprice with which they have been varied, and the obscurity in which they have become involved by time and contradictory decisions, they are become a source of infinite confusion, litigation, and expense.

Your petitioners need not tender any evidence of the inconveniences which arise from this defect in the representation, because the proof is to be found in your Journals, and the minutes of the different committees who have been appointed under the 10th and 11th of the king. Your honourable House is but too well acquainted with the tedious, intriThey afirm, that seventy of your honoura-cate, and expensive scenes of litigation which ble members are returned by thirty-five places, where the right of voting is vested in burgage and other tenures of a similar description, and in which it would be to trifle with the pati. ence of your honourable House, to mention any number of voters whatever, the elections at the places alluded to being notoriously a mere matter of form. And this your petitioners are ready to prove.

They affirm, that in addition to the seventy honourable members so chosen, ninety more of your honourable members are elected by forty six places, in none of which the number of voters exceeds fifty. And this your petitioners are ready to prove.

have been brought before you, in attempting to settle the legal import of those numerous distinctions which perplex and confound the present rights of voting. How many months of your valuable time have been wasted in listening to the wrangling of lawyers upon the various species of burgagehold, leasehold, and freehold! How many committees have been occupied in investigating the nature of scot and lot, potwallers, commonalty, populacy, resiant inhabitants, and inhabitants at large! What labour and research have been employed in endeavouring to ascertain the legal claims of borough-men, aldermen, port

men, select-men, burgesses, and council-men! | 939,870 householders who have no voice in And what confusion has arisen from the com- the representation, unless they have obtained plicated operation of clashing charters, from it by accident or by purchase. Neither their freemen resident and non-resident, and from contributions to the public burthens, their the different modes of obtaining the freedom peaceable demeanor as good subjects, nor of corporations by birth, by servitude, by their general respectability and merits as marriage, by redemption, by election, and by useful citizens, afford them, as the law now purchase! On all these points it is, however, stands, the smallest pretensions to participate needless for your petitioners to enlarge, when in the choice of those who, under the name of your honourable House recollects the follow-their representatives, may dispose of their ing facts: namely, that since the twenty- fortunes and liberties. second of December, 1790, no less than twenty-one committees have been employed in deciding upon litigated rights of voting, Of these, eight were occupied with the disputes of three boroughs, and there are petitions from four places yet remaining before your honourable House, waiting for a final decision to inform the electors what their rights really are.

But the complaint of your petitioners on the subject of the want of an uniform and equitable principle in regulating the right of voting, extends as well to the arbitrary manner in which some are excluded, as to the intricate qualifications by which others are admitted to the exercise of that privilege.

Religious opinions create an incapacity to vote. All Papists are excluded generally, and, by the operation of the test laws, Protestant Dissenters are deprived of a voice in the election of representatives in about thirty boroughs, where the right of voting is confined to corporate officers alone; a deprivation the more unjustifiable, because, though considered as unworthy to vote, they are deemed capable of being elected, and may be the representatives of the very places for which they are disqualified from being the

electors.

[blocks in formation]

A man paying taxes to any amount, how great soever, for his domestic establishment, does not thereby obtain a right to vote, unless his residence be in some borough where that right is vested in the inhabitants. This exception operates in sixty places, of which twenty-eight do not contain three hundred voters each, and the number of householders in England and Wales (exclusive of Scotland), who pay all taxes, is 714,911, and of householders who pay all taxes, but the House and window taxes, is 284,459, as appears by a return made to your honourable House in 1735; so that, even supposing the sixty places above mentioned to contain, one with another, one thousand voters in each, there will remain

In Scotland, the grievance arising from the nature of the rights of voting, has a different and still more intolerable operation. In that great and populous division of the kingdom, not only the great mass of the householders, but of the landholders also, are excluded from all participation in the choice of representatives. By the remains of the feudal system in the counties, the vote is severed from the land, and attached to what is called the superiority. In other words, it is taken from the substance, and transferred to the shadow, because, though each of these superiorities must, with very few exceptions, arise from lands of the present annual value of four hun dred pounds sterling, yet it is not necessary that the lands should do more than give a name to the superiority, the possessor of which may retain the right of voting notwithstanding he be divested of the property. And on the other hand, great landholders have the means afforded them by the same system, of adding to their influence, without expense to themselves, by communicating to their confidential friends the privilege of electing members to serve in parliament. The process by which this operation is performed is simple. He who wishes to increase the number of his dependent votes, surrenders his charter to the Crown, and, parcelling out his estate into as many lots of four hundred pounds per annum, as may be convenient, conveys them to such as he can confide in. To these, new charters are, upon application, granted by the Crown, so as to erect each of them into a superiority, which privilege once obtained, the land itself is reconveyed to the original grantor; and thus the representatives of the landed interest in Scotland may be chosen by those who have no real or beneficial interest in the land.

Such is the situation in which the counties of Scotland are placed. With respect to the burghs, every thing that bears even the semblance of popular choice, has long been done away. The election of members to serve in parliament is vested in the magistrates and town councils, who, having by various innovations, constituted themselves into selfelected bodies, instead of officers freely chosen by the inhabitants at large, have deprived the people of all participation in that privilege, the free exercise of which affords the only security they can possess for the protection of their liberties and property.

The fourth and last complaint of your peti

tioners is the length of the duration of parliaments. Your honourable House knows, that by the ancient laws and statutes of this kingdom frequent parliaments ought to be held; and that the sixth of William and Mary, c. 2. (since repealed) speaking while the spirit of the revolution was yet warm, declared, that "frequent and new parliaments tend very much to the happy union and good agreement between king and people ;" and enacted, that no parliament should last longer than three years. Your petitioners, without presuming to add to such an authority by any observations of their own, humbly pray that parliaments may not be continued for seven years.

Your petitioners have thus laid before you the specific grounds of complaint, from which they conceive every evil in the representation to spring, and on which they think every abuse and inconvenience is founded.

What those abuses are, and how great that inconvenience is, it becomes your petitioners to state, as the best means of justifying their present application to your honourable House. Your petitioners then affirm, that from the combined operation of the defects they have pointed out, arise those scenes of confusion, litigation, and expense which so disgrace the name, and that extensive system of private patronage which is so repugnant to the spirit of free representation.

Your petitioners intreat of your honourable House to consider the manner in which elections are conducted, and to reflect upon the extreme inconvenience to which electors are exposed, and the intolerable expense to which candidates are subjected.

Your honourable House knows that tumults, disorders, outrages, and perjury, are too often the dreadful attendants on contested elections as at this time carried on.

Your honourable House knows that polls are only taken in one fixed place for each county, city, and borough, whether the number of voters be ten or ten thousand, and whether they be resident or dispersed over England.

Your honourable House knows that polls, however few the electors, may by law be continued for fifteen days, and even then be subjected to a scrutiny.

Your honourable House knows that the management and conduct of polls is committed to returning officers, who, from the very nature of the proceedings, must be invested with extensive and discretionary powers, and who, it appears by every volume of your Journals, have but too often exercised those powers with the most gross partiality and the most scandalous corruption.

Of elections arranged with such little regard to the accommodation of the parties, acknowledged to require such a length of time to complete, and trusted to the superintendance of such suspicious agents, your petitioners might easily draw out a detail of the expense.

But it is unnecessary. The fact is too notorious to require proof, that scarce an instance can be produced where a member has obtained a disputed seat in parliament at a less cost than from two to five thousand pounds; particular cases are not wanting where ten times these sums have been paid; but it is sufficient for your petitioners to affirm, and to be able to prove it if denied, that such is the expense of a contested return, that he who should become a candidate with even greater funds than the law requires him to swear to as his qualification to sit in your honourable House, must either relinquish his pretensions on the appearance of an opposition, or so reduce his fortune in the contest, that he could not take his seat without perjury.

The revision of the original polls before the committees of your honourable House, upon appeals from the decisions of the returning officers, affords a fresh source of vexation and expense to all parties. Your honourable House knows, that the complicated rights of voting, and the shameful practices which disgrace election proceedings, have so loaded your table with petitions for judgment and redress, that one half of the usual duration of a parliament has scarcely been sufficient to settle who is entitled to sit for the other half; and it was not till within the last two months that your honourable House had an opportunity of discovering, that the two gentlemen who sat and voted near three years as the representatives of the borough of Stockbridge, had procured themselves to be elected by the most scandalous bribery, and that the two gentlemen, who sat and voted during as long a period for the borough of Great Grimsby, had not been elected at all.

In truth, all the mischiefs of the present system of representation are ascertained by the difficulties which even the zeal and wisdom of your honourable House experiences in attending to the variety of complaints brought before you. Though your committees sit five hours every day from the time of their appointment, they generally are unable to come to a decision in less than a fortnight, and very frequently are detained from thirty to forty days. The Westminster case in 1789, will even furnish your honourable House with an instance, where, after deliberating forty-five. days, a committee gravely resolved, that, "from an attentive consideration of the circumstances relating to the cause, a final decision of the business before them could not take place in the course of the session, and that not improbably the whole of the parliament" (having at that time near two years longer to sit) might be consumed in a tedious and expensive litigation;" and they recommended it to the petitioners to withdraw their petition, which, after a fruitless perseverance of above three months, they were actually obliged to submit to.

66

Your petitioners will only upon this subject further add, that the expense to each of the

parties, who have been either plaintiff or defendant in petitions tried before your honourable House in the present session, has upon an average, amounted to above one hundred pounds per day; and that the attornies bills in one cause, the trial of which in point of form only lasted two days, and in point of fact only six hours, amounted to very near twelve hundred pounds. And this your petitioners are ready to prove.

tioners will name them, and be governed by the testimony which they themselves shall publicly give. But if neither of these proofs be thought consistent with the proceedings of your honourable House, then your petitioners can only assert their belief of the fact, which they hereby do in the most solemn manner, and on the most deliberate conviction.

Your petitioners intreat your honourable House to believe, that in complaining of this species of influence, it is not their intention or desire to decry or to condemn that just and natural attachment which they, who are en

Your petitioners must now beg leave to call the attention of your honourable House to the greatest evil produced by these defects in the representation of which they complain, name-abled by their fortune, and inclined by their ly, the extent of private parliamentary patronage; an abuse which obviously tends to exclude the great mass of the people from any substantial influence in the election of the House of Commons, and which, in its progress, threatens to usurp the sovereignty of the country, to the equal danger of the King, of the Lords, and of the Commons.

The patronage of which your petitioners complain, is of two kinds: That which arises from the unequal distribution of the elective franchise, and the peculiar rights of voting by which certain places return members to serve in parliaments; and that which arises from the expense attending contested elections, and the consequent degree of power acquired by wealth.

By these two means, a weight of parliamentary influence has been obtained by certain individuals, forbidden by the spirit of the laws, and in its consequences most dangerous to the liberties of the people of Great Britain. The operation of the first species of patronage is direct, and subject to positive proof. Eighty-four individuals do, by their own immediate authority, send one hundred and fiftyseven of your honourable members to parliament. And this your petitioners are ready, if the fact be disputed, to prove, and to name the members and the patrons.

The second species of patronage cannot be shown with equal accuracy, though it is felt with equal force.

Your petitioners are convinced that, in addition to the one hundred and fifty-seven honourable members above mentioned, one hundred and fifty more, making in the whole three hundred and seven, are returned to your honourable House, not by the collected voice of those whom they appear to represent, but by the recommendation of seventy powerful individuals, added to the eighty-four before mentioned, and making the total number of patrons altogether only one hundred and fiftyfour, who return a decided majority of your honourable House.

If your honourable House will accept as evidence the common report and general belief of the counties, cities, and boroughs, which return the members alluded to, your petitioners are ready to name them, and to prove the fact; or if the members in question can be made parties to the inquiry, your peti

disposition, to apply great means to honourable and benevolent ends, will always insure to themselves. What your petitioners complain of is, that property, whether well or ill employed, has equal power; that the present system of representation gives to it a degree of weight which renders it independent of character; enables it to excite fear as well as procure respect, and confines the choice of electors within the ranks of opulence; because, though it cannot make riches the sole object of their affection and confidence, it can and does throw obstacles, almost insurmountable, in the way of every man who is not rich, and thereby secures to a select few the capability of becoming candidates themselves, or supporting the pretensions of others. Of this your petitioners complain loudly, because they conceive it to be highly unjust, that, while the language of the law requires from a candidate no greater estate, as a qualification, than a few hundred pounds per annum, the opcration of the law should disqualify every man whose rental is not extended to thousands; and that, at the same time that the legislature appears to give the electors a choice from amongst those who possess a moderate and independent competence, it should virtually compel them to choose from amongst those who themselves abound in wealth, or are supported by the wealth of others.

Your petitioners are the more alarmed at the progress of private patronage, because it is rapidly leading to consequences which menace the very existence of the constitution.

At the commencement of every session of parliament, your honourable House acting up to the laudable jealousy of your predecessors, and speaking the pure, constitutional language of a British House of Commons, resolve, as appears by your journals, "that no peer of this realm hath any right to give his vote in the election of any member to serve in parliament;" and also, “that it is a high infringement upon the liberties and privileges of the Commons of Great Britain, for any lord of parliament or any lord lieutenant of any county, to concern themselves in the elections of members to serve for the Commons in par-, liament."

Your petitioners inform your honourable House, and are ready to prove it at your bar, that they have the most reasonable grounds

« ÎnapoiContinuă »