III. The Franchise and the Electoral Questions of To-day
91. The Franchise as It Is.—By the measures of 1884 and 1885 the House of Commons was placed upon a broadly democratic basis. Both measures stand to-day upon the statute-books, and neither has been amended in any important particular. With respect to the existing franchises there are two preponderating facts. One of them is that individuals, as such, do not possess the privilege of voting; on the contrary, the possession of the privilege is determined all but invariably in relation to the ownership or occupation of property. The other is that the franchise system, while substantially uniform throughout the kingdom, is none the less the most complicated in Europe. There are three important franchises which are universal and two which are not. In the first group are included: (1) occupancy, as owner or tenant, of land or tenement of a clear yearly value of £10; (2) occupancy, as owner or tenant, of a dwelling-house, or part of a house used as a separate dwelling, without regard to its value; and (3) occupancy of lodgings of the value, unfurnished, of £10 a year. The two franchises which are not universal are (1) ownership of land of forty shillings yearly value or occupation of land under certain other specified conditions—this being applicable only to counties and, to a small extent, to boroughs which are counties in themselves; and (2) residence of freemen in those towns in which they had a right to vote prior to 1832. The conditions and exceptions by which these various franchises are attended are so numerous that few people in England save lawyers make a pretense of knowing them all, and the volume of litigation which arises from the attempted distinction between "householder" and "lodger," and from other technicalities of the subject, is enormous. Voters must be twenty-one years of age, and there are several complicated requirements in respect to the period of occupation of land and of residence, and likewise in respect to the fulfillment of the formalities of registration.[123] There are also various incidental disqualifications. No peer, other than a peer of Ireland who is in possession of a seat in the House of Commons, may vote; persons employed as election agents, canvassers, clerks, or messengers may not vote, nor may the returning officers of the constituencies, save when necessary to break a tie between two candidates; and aliens, felons, and, under stipulated conditions, persons in receipt of public charity, are similarly debarred. In the aggregate, however, the existing franchises approach measurably near manhood suffrage. It has been computed that the ratio of electors to population is approximately one in six, whereas, the normal proportion of males above the age of twenty-one, making no allowance for paupers, criminals, and other persons commonly disqualified by law, is somewhat less than one in four. The only classes of adult males at present excluded regularly from the voting privilege are domestic servants, bachelors living with their parents and occupying no premises on their own account, and persons whose change of abode periodically deprives them of a vote.
"The present condition of the franchise," asserts Lowell, "is, indeed, historical rather than rational. It is complicated, uncertain, expensive in the machinery required, and excludes a certain number of people whom there is no reason for excluding, while it admits many people who ought not to be admitted if any one is to be debarred."[124] During the past generation there has been demand from a variety of quarters that the conditions of the franchise, and, indeed, the electoral system as a whole, be overhauled, co-ordinated, and liberalized; and at the date of writing (1912) there is pending in Parliament a measure of fundamental importance looking in this direction. The electoral changes which have been most widely advocated, at least in recent years, are four in number: (1) a fresh apportionment of seats in the Commons in accordance with the distribution of population; (2) the extension of the franchise to classes of men at present debarred; (3) the abolition of the plural vote; and (4) the enfranchisement of women.
92. The Question of Redistribution of Seats.—As has been pointed out, the Redistribution of Seats Act of 1885 established constituencies in which there was some approach to equality. The principle was far from completely carried out. For example, the newly created borough of Chelsea contained upwards of 90,000 people, while the old borough of Windsor had fewer than 20,000. But the inequalities left untouched by the act were slight in comparison with those which have arisen during a quarter of a century in which there has been no reapportionment whatsoever. In 1901 the least populous constituency of the United Kingdom, the borough of Newry in Ireland, contained but 13,137 people, while the southern division of the county of Essex contained 217,030; yet each was represented by a single member. This means, of course, a gross disparity in the weight of popular votes, and, in effect, the over-representation of certain sets of opinions and interests. In January, 1902, an amendment to a parliamentary address urging the desirability of redistribution was warmly debated in the Commons, and, on the eve of its fall, in the summer of 1905, the Balfour government submitted a Redistribution Resolution designed to meet the demands of the "one vote, one value" propagandists. At this time it was pointed out that whereas immediately after the reform of 1885 the greatest ratio of disparity among the constituencies was 5.8 to 1, in twenty years it had risen to 16.5 to 1. The plan proposed provided for the fixing of the average population to be represented by a member at from 50,000 to 65,000, the giving of eighteen additional seats to England and Wales and of four to Scotland, the reduction of Ireland's quota by twenty-two, and such further readjustments as would bring down the ratio of greatest disparity to 6.8 to 1. Under a ruling of the Speaker to the effect that the resolution required to be divided into eight or nine parts, to be debated separately, the proposal was withdrawn. It was announced that a bill upon the subject would be brought in, but the early retirement of the ministry rendered this impossible, and throughout succeeding years this aspect of electoral reform yielded precedence to other matters.[125]
A special difficulty inherent in the subject is imposed by the peculiar situation of Ireland. By reason of the decline of Ireland's population during the past half century that portion of the United Kingdom has come to be markedly over-represented at Westminster. The average Irish commoner sits for but 44,147 people, while the average English member represents 66,971. If a new distribution were to be made in strict proportion to members Ireland would lose 30 seats and Wales three, while Scotland would gain one and England about 30. It is contended by the Irish people, however, that the Act of Union of 1800, whereby Ireland was guaranteed as many as one hundred parliamentary seats, is in the nature of a treaty, whose stipulations cannot be violated save by the consent of both contracting parties; and so long as the Irish are not allowed a separate parliament they may be depended upon to resist, as they did resist in 1905, any proposal contemplating the reduction of their voting strength in the parliament of the United Kingdom.
93. The Problem of the Plural Vote.—Aside from the enfranchisement of women, the principal suffrage questions in Great Britain to-day are those pertaining to the conferring of the voting privilege upon adult males who are still debarred, the abolition of the plural vote, and a general simplification and unification of franchise arrangements. The problem of the plural vote is an old one. Under existing law an elector may not vote more than once in a single constituency, nor in more than one division of the same borough; but aside from this, and except in so far as is not prohibited by residence requirements, he is entitled to vote in every constituency in which he possesses a qualification. In the United States and in the majority of European countries a man is possessed of but one vote, and any arrangement other than this would seem to contravene the principle of civic equality which lies at the root of popular government. In England there have been repeated attempts to bring about the establishment of an unvarying rule of "one man, one vote," but never as yet with success. The number of plural voters—some 525,000—is relatively small, but when it is remembered that a single voter may cast during a parliamentary election as many as fifteen or twenty votes it will be observed that the number quite suffices to turn the scale in many closely contested constituencies. An overwhelming proportion of the plural voters are identified with the Conservative party, whence it arises that the Liberals are, and long have been, hostile to the privilege. Following the Liberal triumph at the elections of 1906 a Plural Voting Bill was introduced requiring that every elector possessed of more than one vote should be registered in the constituency