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Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow 101.: Representation of the People (Ireland) 15 JUNE, 1868 - 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

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

101.: Representation of the People (Ireland) 15 JUNE, 1868 - 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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101.

Representation of the People (Ireland)

15 JUNE, 1868

PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 192, col. 1592. Reported in The Times, 16 June, p. 7, from which the responses are taken. Mill spoke in Committee on “A Bill to Amend the Representation of the People in Ireland,” 31 Victoria (19 Mar., 1868), PP, 1867–68, IV, 549–64. Under consideration was Clause 18: “It shall not be lawful for any Candidate, or any One on his Behalf, at any Election for any City, Town, or Borough, to pay any Money on account of the Conveyance of any Voter to the Poll, either to the Voter himself or to any other Person; and if any such Candidate, or any Person on his Behalf, shall pay any Money on account of the Conveyance of any Voter to the Poll, such Payment shall be deemed to be an illegal Payment within the Meaning of ‘The Corrupt Practices Prevention Act, 1854.’ ” An amendment was proposed to exempt Carrickfergus, Cork, Drogheda, Galway, Kilkenny, Limerick, and Waterford, on the ground that these towns included rural districts where homes were far from the polling places. Mill spoke after some discussion of whether people would walk five miles to vote.

mr. j. stuart mill said, he thought that if the House was in earnest on this subject of Parliamentary Reform in Ireland there ought to be no hesitation in dealing with the question now before the Committee. (Hear, hear.) If they decided upon granting the suffrage to the Irish people, they ought to give all possible facilities for the exercise of the voting power. Those facilities ought not, however, to be provided at the expense of the candidates, but of the public; and even if carriages were necessary for the conveyance of voters to the poll, these also ought to be provided at the public cost. (Hear, hear.) Additional polling places were provided in the English Reform Bill,1 and if, being necessary in Ireland, they were not provided by the Legislature, what would the Irish Reform Bill be worth after all? There were numbers of places in England much larger than those in Ireland for which exemptions were now sought, and, in his opinion, exceptions ought only to be made in extreme cases.

[After Drogheda, Kilkenny, and Waterford had been deleted from the amendment, it was accepted.]

[1 ]I.e., the Reform Act, 30 & 31 Victoria, c. 102 (1867).