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There are, however, certain disqualifications for Membership of the House of Commons. Aliens cannot compete for a seat. The candidate must either be a natural born British subject or a naturalized foreigner. Colonials and native Indians are, of course, eligible. But any British subject may not be nominated. The candidate must be of the age of twenty-one years. Yet the production of a birth certificate is not required by the returning officer. There are at least two notable instances of “infants” having sat in the House of Commons. Charles James Fox was returned for Midhurst before he was twenty, and Lord John Russell for Tavistock before he was twenty-one. Mental imbecility is a disqualification. It would, perhaps, be too much to say that the candidate is required to be of sound mind and understanding, but he must not obviously be a lunatic or idiot. If he should lose his senses after election his case is provided for by “An Act to amend the law in regard to the vacating of seats in the House of Commons,” which was passed in 1886. It enacts that if a Member is committed as a lunatic to any asylum it is the duty of the medical doctor who made the committal and the superintendent of the asylum to report the case without delay to the Speaker. The Speaker then directs the Commissioners of Lunacy to examine the Member, and if they report that the Member is of unsound mind six months are allowed to elapse, when they again examine and report, and if they still find the Member insane the two reports are laid on the Table of the House, and the seat thereby becomes vacant. Blindness is not a disqualification—not even for the Treasury Bench. There is the remarkable case of Mr. Henry Fawcett, who, in spite of this great physical disability, sat for Hackney, was Postmaster-General in the Gladstone Administration of 1880, and was the originator of the postal order, parcel post, and Post Office annuities. Are deaf and dumb persons disqualified by reason of their physical defects? They are said to be, but as there is no case in point, the matter is somewhat in doubt.
English peers and peers of Great Britain and the United Kingdom are ineligible for election to the House of Commons, being, of course, hereditary Members of the House of Lords. The second Lord Selborne sat as Lord Wolmer in the House of Commons for West Edinburgh, when, on the death of his father in 1895, he succeeded to the peerage. As he desired to remain in the House of Commons, he raised the point that a peer, as such, was not debarred from sitting in that House until he received his writ of summons to the other House as a Lord of Parliament, and declared his intention to be not to make the necessary application for such writ of summons. The House of Commons appointed a Select Committee to inquire into the matter, and on their report that Lord Wolmer had succeeded to a peerage of the United Kingdom the constituency of West Edinburgh was declared to be vacant, and a new writ was at once issued for the election of a Member for the seat. It is the succession to a peerage, and not the receipt of the writ of summons to the House of Lords, which is held to disqualify for membership of the House of Commons. Scottish peers are also precluded. Even those outside the sixteen representative peers of Scotland—elected by the general body of the Scottish peerage to sit for each Parliament in the House of Lords—are ineligible for election to the House of Commons. The Irish peerage is not under this political disability. By the Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland an Irish peer—providing he is not one of the twenty-eight Irish representative peers elected by the general body of the Irish peerage to sit for life in the House of Lords—may be returned by any constituency in England or Scotland. But he is disqualified for an Irish seat. The most famous instance was that of Lord Palmerston, who was an Irish peer and sat in the House of Commons for an English constituency for close on sixty years.
Clergymen of the Church of England, of the Church of Scotland, and Roman Catholic priests are disqualified. The statutory exclusion of clergymen from the House of Commons dates from the beginning of the nineteenth century. Until then the question was involved in doubt and uncertainty. It was first raised in a concrete form by the return of the famous Radical parson, Horne Tooke, in 1801 for the nomination borough of Old Sarum. He held no benefice in the Church, but as in law he was still a clerk in Holy Orders it was contended that he was ineligible. A Select Committee appointed to inquire into the precedents reported that they were not sufficiently clear to warrant the exclusion of Tooke; but though he was, accordingly, allowed to retain his seat, an Act was immediately passed which closed the doors of the House of Commons to clergymen of the Established Church and ministers of the Church of Scotland. Church of England parsons who, under the provisions of the Clerical Disabilities Act of 1870, divest themselves of their Orders become thereby eligible for election, and several ex-clergymen have sat in the House of Commons. Roman Catholic priests are expressly incapacitated by a clause of the Emancipation Act of 1829, which admitted Roman Catholic laymen to Parliament. The Act of 1801 does not apply to ministers of dissenting Churches, and they therefore are qualified to sit in the House of Commons.
Office of various kinds is a disqualification. Judges of the High Court and county court judges are ineligible. In the time of the Stuarts a resolution of the House of Commons precluded Judges of the High Court from sitting in Parliament. During the Commonwealth, when the House of Lords was abolished, Sir Matthew Hale and other distinguished Judges sat in the House of Commons. It was not until the passing of the Judicature Act, 1875, that Judges of the High Court came under a statutory disability to sit in the House of Commons. County court judges had already been precluded by an Act passed in 1847. A Recorder may sit in the House of Commons, but not for the city or borough in which he exercises his jurisdiction in criminal matters. The civil servants on the permanent staff of the various Departments of Government are debarred from sitting in the House of Commons. Yet commissioned officers of the Army and Navy are qualified. But Army officers become M.P.’s at the sacrifice of half their pay, though they remain on the active list. Government contractors for work to be done or goods to be supplied in the public service are ineligible. No returning officer may stand for the place where he is commanded by writ from the Crown Office to hold an election. A bankrupt is disqualified. He may be nominated, but if elected he cannot sit.
But though all property qualifications have been abolished, the aspirant for a seat in Parliament must have money in his purse, or raise it from some other source. The expenses of the returning officer for the provision of polling stations and the fee for his official services were formerly paid by the candidates. If there was no contest, the candidate on nomination paid £25. In the event of a contest the charges were considerably higher. They ran in boroughs from £100 up to £700, and in counties from £150 to £1,000, according to the number of electors on the register, and were apportioned equally between the candidates. As provided by the Representation of the People Act, 1918, the returning officer’s expenses are now paid by the Treasury. But each candidate must deposit with his nomination paper a sum of £150, which is returned to him if he wins as soon as he has taken the oath as a Member of Parliament, and even if he loses, provided he obtains more than one-eighth of the votes polled. In all other cases the deposit is, as the Act says, “forfeited to His Majesty,” save in University elections, where it is retained by the University. This provision was designed to discourage “freak” candidatures. It costs more to lose than to win an election.