Since that

They, therefore, came to a unanimous de- | Bill to the second reading. cision to recommend the discontinuation of time I have had an opportunity of carethe practice of tendering oaths to a wit- fully considering the form of Oath proness who came to speak only to matters posed by the noble Lord, and also of conof opinion, and he hoped their Lordships sulting with those friends who hold the would confirm that decision. But where same views as myself with regard to this there were contested facts and conflicting question, and we are all of opinion that evidence, the Committee considered that it the Oath proposed by the noble Lord is in was just and necessary to administer an many respects a very great improvement oath to witnesses who came to depose to upon the Oaths at present taken, both on matters of fact before a Committee of their the score of simplicity, and also as putting Lordships' House on a private Bill as it an end to the taking of oaths the necessity was in any court of law in the kingdom. for which has become obsolete. Our only The Committee, however, had left the objection to the Oath proposed by the mode in which the oath should be adminis- noble Lord is that it may be taken by tered in that case an open question; but persons who are not compelled to declare he (Lord Campbell) was clearly of opinion themselves Christians. In order to carry that the witnesses ought to be sworn be- out the object which we have in view it fore the Committee that sat upon the Bill, would be necessary to insert certain words and not at the bar of the House. The in the Oath, and that cannot be done upon noble and learned Lord concluded to re- the second reading. We approve genesolverally of the form of the Oath, and our only complaint is that it falls short of what we desire. What I propose to do, therefore, is to offer no opposition to the second reading of the Bill, but in Committee I shall propose the insertion of certain words which will preserve the Christian character of this Oath. In that manner I shall raise the simple question without the admixture of any foreign matter, whether this House is prepared to admit to the Legislature persons who do not profess the Christian faith? I have thought it only due to this House to state thus briefly the course which I propose to adopt.

"That Select Committees in future shall examine Witnesses without their having been previously sworn, except in Cases in which it may be otherwise ordered by the House:

"That all Committees on Private Bills shall examine Witnesses on Oath, except in Cases in which it may be otherwise ordered by the House."

House adjourned at half past Six
o'clock, till To-morrow, half past

mmmmm

Ten o'clock.

HOUSE OF COMMONS,

Thursday, June 4, 1857.

MINUTES.] NEW WRIT.-For the County of Car-
marthen, v. David Arthur Saunders Davies,
esq., deceased.

PUBLIC BILLS.-1° Court of Exchequer (Ire-
land); Married Women's Reversionary Inte-
rest; Burials; Alehouse Licensing.
2o Turnpike Trusts Abolition (Ireland); Joint
Stock Companies Act Amendment; Sheep, &c.
Contagious Diseases Prevention.

3° Ministers' Money (Ireland); Princess Royal's
Annuity.

THE OATHS BILL-NOTICE.

SIR FREDERIC THESIGER: Sir, it may be for the convenience of the House that I should state the course which I propose to pursue with regard to the Oaths Bill, the second reading of which is fixed for Monday next. At the time of the in

troduction of the Bill I stated to the noble Lord at the head of the Government that it was my intention to postpone any opposition which I might have to offer to the

1

THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: Sir, after what has fallen from the hon. and learned Gentleman, I beg to state that should there be no prolonged discussion on Monday next with regard to the Oaths Bill, we propose to continue the Committee of Supply, and if the Army Estimates should be concluded to-morrow, to go on with the Civil Service Estimates on Monday.

PAPER DUTY-QUESTION.

MR. G. A. HAMILTON asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether it is the intention of Government, with a view to the promotion of education, to propose any measure for granting a drawback on the paper duty as regards paper and books used for the purposes of education?

THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHE. QUER said, he had no intention at present of introducing any measure with that object.

MR. KINNAIRD asked the President of the Poor Law Board, Whether he has received any Communication from the Board of Guardians of St. Marylebone in answer to the Report of the Commission-any Bill for the purpose of abolishing tolls ers of Lunacy, and whether he will have land. He hoped, however, to be in a polevied at turnpikes and bridges in Scotany objection to lay such Communication sition to do so at the commencement of upon the table of the House; and whether the ensuing Session. any steps are about to be taken for the purpose of preventing the continuance of the system now prevailing in the Marylebone Workhouse in regard to the treatment of Pauper Lunatics?

its operation; but, in his opinion, the Bill
of the noble Lord opposite (Lord R. Gros-
venor), which had for its object the ren-
dering the payment of travelling expenses
penal, would, if passed into a law, afford a
still stronger reason than any which he
(Lord R. Cecil) had advanced for the adop-
tion of some such measure as he proposed.
The question was one which must be
settled in some way or the other. It had
never yet been satisfactorily settled. The
courts of law had given conflicting deci-
sions on the subject, and it was matter of
doubt in what light Committees of the
House of Commons would regard the pay-
ment of the expenses of voters. The
ques-
tion, however, must be solved in one way
or another, and the Bill proposed by the
noble Lord the Member for Middlesex was
so open to objection, and would disfran-
chise so large a number of voters, that he
did not believe it would be adopted by Par-
liament. There was no other way of deal-
ing with the question satisfactorily except
by taking away the necessity of going to
the poll at all, which could only be done
by means of voting papers. An additional
recommendation in favour of the plan he
proposed was, in the diminution of the
present expense of county, as compared
with borough elections. These expenses
frequently amounted to £4,000, £5,000,
or £6,000. They might not always ap-
pear in the auditor's accounts, or in any
public document, but they formed a heavy
penalty, which prevented many men from
going to Parliament; and many valuable
and deserving Members were compelled to
retire from the representation of counties be-
cause they were not able to meet the heavy
expenses of a contested election. Another
blemish was one which the House had made
many futile attempts to remove.
He re-
ferred to that which was the subject of fre-
quent complaint-and, indeed, almost the
only ground now remaining on which the
petitions against the return of Members
relied, namely, "treating." Bribery, al-
though not abolished, was much diminish-
ed. The great offence was treating, and
the system of voting papers would abso-
"Treat-

proposal, he was not calling upon it to
legislate, but simply to inquire, and that
therefore the argument that all questions
relating to the elective franchise should be
postponed until the whole subject came
under consideration next year, was one
which could not justly be urged in opposi-
tion to the course which he was about to
ask the House to take. The fact that they
were going to legislate on that great ques-
tion next year, was a fair reason for in-
quiry now. He believed the adoption of
the system of voting papers would remedy
many of the defects in the present condition
of the electoral franchise of which reformers
complained. Those who were the advo-
cates of Reform were opposed to the pre-
sent state of things, because they did not
think the franchise was sufficiently extend-
ed; but, while holding these sentiments,
they did not seem to be quite alive to the
circumstance that, in the case even of
those who possessed the franchise, the
privilege which it conferred was exercised
by a comparatively small number out of
the whole body of electors. To show,
however, that such was the fact, he might
state that, at the general election which
took place in 1847, there had been con-
tests in thirteen counties or divisions of
counties, in which the number of registered
electors had amounted to 90,400; the
number who had not voted being 24,136,
or about twenty-seven in every 100 per-
sons. There were no returns on which re-
liance could be placed in connection with
the general election of 1852; but it ap-
peared from a high liberal authority-the
Edinburgh Review-that fifty-five out of
every 100 electors in large constituencies
had, in that year, abstained from voting.
The reason why the franchise had been
exercised in so small a number of cases in
the counties was to be accounted for by
the distance which the voters had to go,
by the expense which travelling entailed,
and by the circumstance that many per-
sons were so much engaged as not to
be able to spare time to attend at the
elections. In support of the last men-
tioned reason, he might observe that in
Middlesex, a bustling and industrious coun-lutely put an end to this abuse.
ty, and one where the polling-places were
more numerous than in the other counties,
there were forty-three out of every 100
electors who had not voted; and that while
the total number of electors had amounted
to 13,781, 5,950 had abstained from exer-
cising the franchise. The present system,
then, was evidently extremely imperfect in

ing" usually took place when voters were
brought up to the poll; and when persons
had put off their affairs, and had come a
distance to vote, they very naturally ex-
pected some refreshment, and candidates
and their friends had some difficulty in re-
fusing their requests: but, if it were un-
necessary for the voter to leave his home,

are the motives to use undue means to affect the
"As the progress of the votes is unknown, so
result diminished, and the voter is proportionately
shielded from the use of those means.
Again-

"At St. Martin's-in-the-fields there used to be

only, at the utmost, 750 voters out of 1,500 rate1,649, 1,522 voted, or not quite seven-eighths." payers. At the first voting paper election out of Such an improvement was what they fairly might expect if the system were extended to Parliamentary elections. But did the experience of subsequent years falsify the expectations of the Commissioners? The only other allusion to the system which he had been able to find in the Reports of the Poor Law Commissioners was in their Report for 1839, where they said—

the occasion for the offence would be taken of a very small knot of individuals, whose residences enabled them to attend without inconaway. Voting papers would also put an end to the inconvenience of collect-venience the place for the transaction of parochial business. The larger ratepayers and the persons ing together large assemblies of persons most deeply interested-those engaged in trade in times of great political excitement, or otherwise occupied-could not abandon their and would relieve us from the scandal occupations to attend to their interests in paroof those occasional outbreaks of riotous chial management without greater prejudice to their more immediate interests in the pursuit of and disorderly conduct which were a dis- their ordinary occupations." grace to our political system. Foreigners They addedremarked with astonishment the disgraceful saturnalia that characterized an English election, and the system of voting papers would put a stop to the scenes of personal violence which sometimes occurred. Of course, as long as electors continued to be corrupt it would be impossible wholly to stop the selling and buying of votes; but one of the most common forms of bribery would be put an end to by voting papers. It was a species of bribery more common perhaps in towns than in counties, and depended upon the state of the poll, as it went on, being furnished to the respective candidates. When the numbers ran close at a critical period of the day, candidates or their friends were sometimes tempted to bribe in the heat of the moment, and the result was an election petition. This temptation would entirely be put a stop to by a system of voting papers, as under his plan the state of the poll would not be known till the election was over. These being the advantages of the plan he proposed, it seemed hard to find any objections to its adoption. But it was said that the plan had been tried and failed in the elections of guardians for poor law districts. It was alleged that the system had been productive of fraud and forgery in poor law elections, and that it was, therefore, unfit for Parliamentary contests. Now, he denied that as a general rule the system had failed in poor law elections, and he relied upon the authoritative Report which the Poor Law Commissioners had given of the working of the system. In the first Report of the Commissioners, which was signed, among others, by the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, they stated the reasons which led to the adoption of the system in poor law voting

"In the largest parishes, with the most nu

merous constituents, and with the greatest faci

lities hitherto offered to the ratepayers to exercise a general control over the management, we usually find that the greatest number of voters by whom any election is determined constitute only a minority, and usually a small minority, of the whole body of ratepayers; and in the rural parishes, where the population is widely scattered, we frequently found the management in the hands

booth

to record his vote in his own handwriting being "By the voting paper on which the elector is left one or two clear days at his residence he is enabled to give his vote in the most free and deliberate manner, undisturbed by the importunities of canvassers, or the tumult and clamour of the pollinghas given general satisfaction. Moreover, it has continued to be marked by greater numbers of votes being given than have been obtained for like objects under any other form of election. In the greater number of instances of contested electhan trebled."

Hitherto this mode of election

tions the number of votes polled have been more

There was a later testimony in favour of the system in a paper laid upon the table two years ago by the noble Lord the Member for Marylebone, from which it would appear that the plan had worked well, and that in the few cases in which it had failed the failure could be traced to the wretched machinery employed, and the under-payment of collectors. Where, however, the police or other parties, over whom some check existed, were appointed to collect the papers, the results were most satisfactory. He should be told that the system had failed in Leeds. In 1852 there was a contested election there, and great frauds were practised; but on referring to the papers laid before Parliament at the time, it would be found that all the frauds turned upon the misconduct of the clerk who had the collection of the papers. The voting papers were returned to the clerk of the Board of Guardians, over whom no