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Subject Area: Political Theory
Collection: The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill

59.: The Reform Bill [5] 27 MAY, 1867 - John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXVIII The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXVIII - Public and Parliamentary Speeches Part I November 1850 - November 1868 [1850]

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The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXVIII - Public and Parliamentary Speeches Part I November 1850 - November 1868, ed. John M. Robson and Bruce L. Kinzer (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1988).

Part of: Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, in 33 vols.

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59.

The Reform Bill [5]

27 MAY, 1867

PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 187, cols. 1142–3, 1185, 1188. Reported in The Times, 28 May, p. 9, from which the responses are taken. In the renewed discussion in Committee of Clause 4 of the Reform Bill, Disraeli made an extended defence of the Government’s intentions, in the course of which he referred to Mill’s having attended a meeting (see No. 58) and “if not [moving] at least [supporting] or sanction[ing] a resolution to the effect that I, representing Her Majesty’s Government, had committed a breach of faith with the House of Commons on this matter” (col. 1139). Mill’s first intervention is in response to that accusation.

i hope the Committee will kindly indulge me for a few minutes. No one, so far as I am aware, on the occasion to which the right honourable Gentleman has alluded, charged him with having broken faith with the House or with the country on the subject of the compound-householder. I most explictly acquitted him of having done so. If such a charge has been made I most willingly admit, and justice would compel me to admit, that he has most clearly and satisfactorily answered it. (Cheers.) I was well aware that the shaft with which he had transfixed us was taken from our own quiver. (Hear.) When the Amendment of the honourable Member for Pontefract (Mr. Childers) was announced,1 I felt, and said, that if it were carried it would entirely destroy us (hear, hear)—that we should be obliged to begin again at the beginning and fight the whole battle over again. If that Amendment had proceeded from this part of the House I should have opposed it, and I shall oppose it now. I had not in my mind that my honourable Friend the Member for Newark (Mr. Hodgkinson) had expressed concurrence in that Motion. I now remember that he did concur in it. But the Committee know that he withdrew that concurrence by placing a fresh Amendment of an entirely different character on the Paper. As the right honourable Gentleman has done me the honour to attend to what I said in another place, he no doubt is well aware of the reasons why I think the 3rd and 4th clauses are entirely inadmissible. I have said this to set myself right with the right honourable Gentleman, against whom I have always endeavoured to avoid saying anything personally offensive. On the occasion referred to, I spoke with studied moderation.

[The Committee moved from Clause 4 to Clause 34, also bearing on the issue of compound-householders; Mill’s second intervention, on an amendment by Ayrton (col. 1183) that would have the effect of making landlords liable for payments not made by short-term occupiers who had been rated in order to gain the franchise, came after Gathorne-Hardy had indicated that the basis of the Government’sobjection to payment of compounded rates through the landlord was “that men would get on the register without paying the full rate, and that persons therefore paying unequal rates would be equally entitled to the franchise” (col. 1185).]

Mr. J. Stuart Mill said, that in addition to the objection mentioned by the right honourable Gentleman, the Amendment would place the weekly tenant of a dwelling-house in a worse position than the weekly tenant of a lodging who would not have to pay any poor rate.

[Ayrton also moved that where “the dwelling-house or tenement shall be wholly let out in separate apartments or lodgings, the owner of such dwelling-house or tenement shall be rated in respect thereof to the poor rate” (col. 1186); Mill’s subsequent motion came after some discussion of the matter.]

Mr. J. Stuart Mill moved the omission of the words “separate apartments or” in the Amendment.

[The amendment was withdrawn so that a substitute amendment using the words “apartments or lodgings not separately rated” could be agreed to.]

[1 ]Hugh Culling Eardley Childers (1827–96), anticipating that Hodgkinson’s amendment (see No. 54) would be defeated, had intimated that he would move an amendment to make compounding optional in all boroughs; when Disraeli had apparently accepted Hodgkinson’s proposal, Childers (20 May, col. 780) declared he would not proceed.