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Subject Area: Political Theory
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Section 12.—: Vacancies Supplied. - Jeremy Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 3 [1843]

Edition used:

The Works of Jeremy Bentham, published under the Superintendence of his Executor, John Bowring (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1838-1843). 11 vols. Vol. 3.

Part of: The Works of Jeremy Bentham, 11 vols.

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Section 12.—

Vacancies Supplied.

Art. I. A seat in the Commons House may be rendered vacant by any one of nine causes:—

1. By non-acceptance.

2. By election to divers seats.

3. By death.

4. By mental derangement.

5. By succession to a peerage.

6. By resignation.

7. By acceptance of a lucrative function under the Crown.

8. By acceptance of a peerage.

9. By expulsion.

Art. II. [The first day of January], in every year, is the day appointed for the first meeting of a new parliament.

On or before that day, every person who, having been elected member for any district, chooses to serve, must, either in person or by LETTER (addressed to the election-master-general,) signify his acceptance.

Failing of such signification, the next day, a new writ is issued for a member to be elected in his place.

Art. III. Suppose the same person returned for divers districts. If he does not choose to serve for any one of them, a fresh writ for each one is issued, as above.

If, choosing to serve for this or that one, he has signified his choice accordingly, fresh writs are issued for all except that one.

Art. IV. In case of the death of a member, the election-master-general, as soon as he has received what in his judgment is sufficient evidence of the fact, issues his writ for a fresh election accordingly.

In the books of his office, he makes entry of the evidence: as, for instance, LETTER from such or such a person; noting the day on which it reached the office.

Art. V. So, if a member becomes afflicted with mental derangement.

Art. VI. So, if a member comes by succession to a peerage.

Art. VII. Every member is at liberty to resign his seat at any time.

To do this, he signs the form of resignation hereto annexed, and delivers it, or causes it to be delivered to the Speaker, at the sitting, or at the rising, of the House.

The Speaker, on receipt of it, attests it, and immediately transmits it to the national-election office.

The election-master, on receipt of it, issues by the next post his writ for a fresh election, as above.

Art. VIII. Upon his acceptance of a lucrative function under the crown, as per list, a member’s seat becomes vacant, as if by death.

Art. IX. So, in case of his acceptance of a peerage.*

Art. X. For the case of expulsion, see Section 13.

Art. XI. On a vacancy, if, by reason of distance, it is not possible for a new member to take his seat before the session is at an end, no election writ shall issue.

[* ]This source of mischief should be cut off: and if under radicalism, of course it would be.

1. In the hands of monarch and minister, it is a perpetually ready bribe, for those who could not be bought by bribe in any other shape.

2. It gives additional strength to a body of men whose interests are avowedly distinct from, and thereby unquestionably opposite to, the universal interest; and who have in their hands the means of making perpetually repeated sacrifices of the universal interest to that separate and sinister interest.

3. It is giving continual increase to a breed of men who, from increase of numbers and extravagance, are in large proportion continually sliding down into a sort of elevated pauperism, which, according to an avowed maxim of Government, must be pampered at an expense proportioned to its factitious elevation. See the avowal of the maxim proved—upon the Whigs, in the “Defence of Economy against Burke,” and upon the Tories, in the “Defence of Economy against Rose;” both printed in the Pamphleteer.—[See these works in this Collection.]

To a limitation of this sort the Peers themselves would naturally have no great objection. In the reign of George the First, by an odd concurrence of causes, it was favoured not only by the Lords, but by the Minister. But, as was altogether natural, it was effectually opposed in Honourable House.