sympathize with him, and that he may dispense with the votes of those who do not.
The choice of the electors is not only restricted by the practical difficulties which thus exclude the vast majority of those who might otherwise be candidates, but it is also farther restricted by legal grounds of exclusion. Special Acts of Parliament, all of which are of a date subsequent to the Revolution, incapacitate the holders of a great number of offices from sitting in Parliament.[1] These provisions might have been useful, as temporary measures, to meet a temporary evil—a system of representation avowedly rotten, which placed the electoral power in a few hands—but they are utterly unsuited and obstructive when they are allowed to encumber the action of a numerous and free constituency.
The late debate on the propriety of excluding the members of the Indian Council from seats in Parliament afforded satisfiactory evidence of the progress of public opinion on this subject.[2] Nearly every member who addressed the House on that occasion, except the minister who had the conduct of the bill, and could scarcely be expected to abandon the clause, either opposed, or doubted the propriety of, the exclusion; and Lord Stanley expressed himself in the most guarded manner, referring to the exclusion of classes as a fact and to the policy as a supposition; and he relied chiefly on the special and novel circumstances of the Indian Council Lord John Russell affirmed the general and true principle, that "without a strong necessity, they would not say to the
- ↑ See 1 Black. Com., p. 175. The following list comprises the principal disabling statutes before the Reform Bill:—5 W. & M. c. 7, a. 57; 11 & 12 W. 3. c. 2, ss. 150, 151; 6 Ann. c. 7, s. 25; 41 Geo. 3, c. 52; 3 Geo. 4, c. 55, s. 14; 10 Geo. 4, c. 50, s. 21; 10 Geo. 4, c. 62. Several others have been passed since. It has been common to introduce such clauses in Acts for administrative purposes. It displays a cheap disinterestedness,—at no cost but that of the righs of the electors, and possibly of the efficiency of the Parliament,—a cost which is not felt.
- ↑ Parl. Deb., vol. cli., p. 785.
