Her Majesty’s Ministers have announced an immediate dissolution of Parliament, and the duty of choosing a Representative in the House of Commons has therefore devolved upon you. Encouraged by the very flattering requisition I have received from an influential portion of your body, I venture to solicit your suffrages at the approaching election.
Having sat in the House of Commons during the entire of the last Parliament, my opinions on most of the questions of the day stand recorded in the votes.
During the last thirty years great improvements have been effected in reference to our Parliamentary Franchises, our Municipal Institutions, and our commercial and fiscal condition. I have been long connected both by official and personal ties with those who, for the greater part of the period referred to, have been the leaders of the great Liberal party by whose exertions these changes have been effected. The principles by which they have been dictated, I desire to see extended in their application.
The question upon which the country will have to decide at the approaching election is that of Parliamentary Reform. I am in favour of a bona-fide extension of the Franchise, both in Counties and Boroughs, which would, by a lowering of the present qualification for the suffrage, admit within the pale of the Constitution an adequate representation of the labouring classes; and I desire to see a portion of their present representation transferred from the smaller and less important Constituencies, to those larger communities which the growth of trade and wealth has produced.
I am opposed to the proposition for taking Votes at Elections for Members of Parliament by Ballot, because I think under its operation corruption could not be detected, and I do not wish to destroy the influence of the Non-Electors, which would be the case under a system of secret voting.
In reference to Taxation, I am desirous of taking off, as the necessities of the State will permit, all those taxes which press upon trade, or impede the springs of industry, and I desire to see judicious economy and retrenchment carried into every branch of the public service.
I consider the Income Tax in its present form presses unjustly upon incomes derived from trade and industry.
I have always in Parliament voted for the abolition of Church Rates, because, as a member of the Church of England, I think the pecuniary gain to the Establishment is not a compensation for the ill will and odium which the enforcement of the claim produces.
I am in favour of the most complete freedom of trade, and have always voted for every measure which tended in that direction.
I desire to see Government aid to Education extended to all classes of my fellow subjects, without distinction of sect, or creed.