

93 



COMMONS, HOUSE OF. 



COMMONS, HOUSE OF. 



04 



hold which shall have been acquired by such person, since the same 1st 

 of March, 1831, unless it shall have come to such person previously to 

 the passing of this Act, by descent, succession, marriage, marriage- 

 settlement, devise, or promotion to any benefice or office. 



It also provided in general, that no person shall be entitled to be 

 registered in any year as a voter for any city or borough who shall, 

 within twelve calendar months previous to the last day of July 

 in that year, have received parochial relief or other alms which, 

 according to the previously existing law of parliament, disqualified 

 from voting. 



Scotland. Owing to the previous absence of all popular suffrage in 

 the Scottish borougha, the revolution made in their parliamentary con- 

 stituencies by the Reform Act of 1832 was effected simply, completely, 

 and at once. The franchise was taken from the members of the town 

 councils and their delegates, in whom as such it was before exclusively 

 Tasted, and a 101. qualification, by ownership or occupancy, substituted 

 in its place, with the like conditions, as in the English Act, of twelve 

 mouths' previous occupancy, payment of assessed taxes, registration, 

 ami non-receipt of parochial relief. 



Ireland. In the Irish cities and boroughs, the change immediately 

 worked by the Parliamentary Reform Act was relatively greater than 

 in England, owing chiefly to the fact that the municipal corporations of 

 the former country existed in a state yet more thoroughly anomalous 

 and corrupt than those of the latter. Here, again, the actually existing 

 and the inchoate titles to the parliamentary suffrage being reserved, as 

 in the English Act, on condition of residence within seven miles, and 

 honorary freemen created since March 30, 1831, being excluded, the 

 101. ownership or occupancy qualification was established as the new 

 basis of suffrage, on condition of registration with six months' previous 

 occupancy and payment of all rates due for more than one half-year. 

 Reservation waa also made, as in the English boroughs, of rights by 

 freehold under 101., when accruing before the passing of the Act, by 

 descent, marriage, ic. The clause of the Catholic Emancipation Act, 

 which raised the freehold qualification in counties at large to 111/., left 

 it at the old amount of 40*. in the several counties of cities and towns; 

 but the Reform Act raised it there to the same scale as in the counties 

 at large (only reserving for life the existing 40*. rights), and at the 

 same time gave the parliamentary franchise for such corporate counties 

 to the same classes of leaseholders, and on the same conditions, whom it 

 admitted in the counties at large. 



ratio. In the two English universities the parliamentary 

 suffrage is independent of residence, property, or occupancy, being 

 vested in the doctors and masters of arts of Cambridge and Oxford 

 respectively, so long as they keep their names on the boards of their 

 respective colleges. In the University of Dublin, in like manner, it is 

 possessed by the fellows, scholars, and graduates of Trinity College, on 

 the like condition. 



The establishment of a general and uniform system of registration 

 of voters, calculated to obviate much of the inconvenience of contested 

 returns, is another very important feature of the Reform Acts ; for the 

 various and rather complicated details of which we must refer the 

 reader to the Acts themselves. 



Having thus given a view of the qualifications for exercising the 

 parliamentary franchise as now established throughout the British 

 Islands, it remains to notice the principal of those legal disqualifications 

 which are of a personal nature, and operate independently of all pro- 

 prietorship or occupancy. 



Every woman, of whatever age, and however independently situated 

 as to property and social relations, is as much excluded from voting 

 as from being elected. As to age in male persons, the only exception 

 is that which excludes all minors ; that is, all who have not completed 

 their twenty-first year. The exception which regards aliens is so 

 natural and obvious that the bare mention of it may here suffice, as 

 this is not the place in which to examine the various difficulties that in 

 many cases have arisen, and still arise, in strictly defining who are 

 aliens and who are not. By the ancient " law of parliament," which 

 forms an integral portion of the common law, lunatics are very reason- 

 ably incapacitated, as also are paupers in city or borough elections. It 

 was resolved by the House of Commons in 1699 (14th December), that 

 " no peer of parliament " has a right to vote for members of that house. 

 After the Union with Ireland, this resolution, which was usually 

 repeated at the beginning of every session, was altered into the follow- 

 ing form : " That no peer of this realm, except such peer of that part 

 of the United Kingdom called Ireland as shall for the time being be 

 actually elected, and shall not have declined to serve, for any county, 

 r borough of Great Britain, hath any right to give his vote in 

 the election of any member to serve in parliament." The vast increase, 

 lie commencement of the last century, owing to the establish- 

 ment of so many new branches of revenue, in the number of persons 

 employed immediately by the crown as revenue-collectors, occasioned 

 i ictment of several statutes of exclusion from the parliamentary 

 franchise. Thus the 22nd George III. c. 41, excludes every class of 

 officers concerned in the collection or management of the excise, cus- 

 ^tamp duties, salt duties, window and house duties, or in any 

 >f the business of the post-office. By 8 George IV. c. 66, 

 i' was first enacted that no justice, receiver, surveyor, or constable, 

 y that Act at any one of the eight police-offices of the 

 English metropolis, shall be capable of voting for Middlesex, Surrey, 



Westminster, or South wark ; and by 10 George IV. c. 44, which esta- 

 blished the new system of police in certain districts of the metropolis 

 (the operation of which has since been extended to meet the local 

 extension of the police system), it was enacted that no justice, receiver, 

 or person belonging to the police force appointed by virtue of that 

 Act, shall be capable of voting for Middlesex, Surrey, Hertfordshire, 

 Essex, or Kent, or for any city or borough within the metropolitan 

 district. Persons legally convicted of perjury or subornation of perjury, 

 or of taking or asking any bribe, are thereby for ever incapacitated 

 from voting. 



As regards religious grounds of disqualification in general, it should 

 be observed, that as no oaths are now required to be taken, nor declara- 

 tions to be made, as a preliminary either to registration or to voting, 

 all such disabilities as might have arisen from refusal to take or make 

 them are of course removed. 



Qualifications of Candidates and Members. 



Of the close relation so long subsisting between the grounds of the 

 elective franchise and of eligibility to be elected, and which had sprung 

 from their original identity, we find distinct traces in the similarity 

 between the heads of disqualification in either case. Women, minors, 

 aliens, and lunatics are, of course, excluded in the latter case as well as tho 

 former. It would be needless to remark, that peers of parliament that is, 

 actual members of the House of Lords are ineligible to the House of 

 Commons, except in order to point out this distinction : that any Irish 

 peer, not being among the twenty-eight sitting in the House of Lords 

 for the time being as representatives of the Irish peerage, and being, 

 therefore, though a peer of the realm, not a peer of parliament, is 

 eligible to represent any constituency in the United Kingdom, although 

 such is not the .case with Scotch peers who are not representative peers. 

 No person concerned in the management of any duties or taxes created 

 since 1692 (except commissioners of the Treasury), nor any officer of 

 the excise, customs, stamps, &c., nor any person holding any office 

 under the crown created since 1705, is eligible. In like manner, pen- 

 sioners under the crown during pleasure, or for a term of years, are 

 wholly excluded. Any member, however, who accepts an office of 

 profit under the crown existing prior to 1705, though he thereby 

 vacates his seat, is capable of being re-elected. Contractors with 

 government are ineligible ; and it is enacted, that if any person so dis- 

 qualified shall sit in the House, he shall forfeit 5001. per day for so 

 doing ; and that if any person having a contract of this nature admits 

 a member of the House to share in it, he shall forfeit 500?. to the 

 prosecutor. Again, by 3 Geo. IV. c. 55, no police justice of the 

 metropolis can sit in parliament. 



The twelve judges for the time being are disqualified, though, as 

 judges, they are occasionally summoned to, and sit in the House of 

 Lords, but have merely a comttltatire voice there. The vice-chancellor, 

 and the master of the rolls, the judges of the Admiralty, Probate, 

 and Matrimonial Causes courts, and those of the County courts, are 

 also excluded. The exclusion of ecclesiastics from seats in the Com- 

 mons' house, seems not only to have been a natural result of tho 

 presumed urgency of their pastoral duties, but to have reference to the 

 period when their share of those general contributions to the extra- 

 ordinary exigencies of the state, the business of settling which, as we 

 have already seen, first gave form and consistency to the parliamentary 

 representation in general, was yielded by them as a distinct body. 

 Sheriffs of counties, and mayors and bailiffs of boroughs, as being 

 themselves returning-officers in parliamentary elections, are ineligible 

 for the several districts respectively for which it is their duty to make 

 returns. 



The repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts in 1828, and the passing 

 of the Catholic Emancipation Act in 1829, have worked one very im- 

 portant alteration in the constitution of the Commons' House, by 

 removing nearly altogether the widely-operating religious disqualifi- 

 cations which previously existed. The engagement, " on the true 

 faith of a Christian," which the latter act substituted for the oath and 

 declaration formerly required, had no effective operation, except 

 against individuals of the Jewish race and creed. This may now be 

 dispensed with in consequence of the passing of the act, 21 & 22 Viet., 

 c. 49, by a resolution of the house of commons, and Jews now sit in 

 the house. 



The property qualification for an English, Welsh, or Irish member 

 was continued by the Reform Acts, namely, for a county member an 

 estate of 600A a year, and for a city or borough member, of 300i. The 

 only personal exceptions from this condition were in favour of the 

 eldest sons of peers or of bishops having seats in the House of Lords, 

 and the eldest sons of persons legally qualified to be county members. 

 As regards the Scottish part of the representation, it is worthy of 

 especial remark, that the property qualifications enacted for England 

 within a very few years after the union with Scotland, had never been 

 extended to the latter portion of the kingdom ; and that consequently 

 the conditions of suffrage and of eligibility have remained there accord- 

 ing to the original constitution of the representative system in both 

 countries, one and the same, excepting only the anciently essential 

 condition of residence, which has long been done away with throughout 

 the United Kingdom without any reservation or limitation whatever ; 

 and excepting also that the Scottish reform act of 1832 rendered 

 unnecessary for county members the qualification of an elector 



