When the Reform Bill of 1867 was passing through the House of Commons, Sir Harry Verney, who had warmly espoused the cause of the disenfranchised civil servants, proposed a clause enabling Revenue officials (who were otherwise qualified) to vote at elections, but, on the recommendations of both Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli, this clause was negatived without a division. Yet this part of the proposal, at any rate, vehemently opposed though it was by the Government of the day and the leaders of the Opposition, was to be within two years embodied in a statute of the realm. Each forward step taken by the friends of enfranchisement was contested by the occupants of both sides of the House; and every argument that could be devised for and against was imported into the discussion.
It was due to Mr. Charles J. Monk, the member for Gloucester, that the first breach in the Opposition was made. From the very first he had been struck with the unfairness of excluding educated and selected men in the Post-Office, Customs, and Inland Revenue from the exercise of the franchise, while their brethren in all the other departments of the State could freely vote and take part in elections. The principal high official argument, used in its many variations, was that it would be an unsafe weapon to place in the hands of men who might use it for furthering excessive demands, and for general purposes of agitation. Mr. Monk’s reply was in most cases to the effect that “if these officers have just cause of complaint it is far better that the grievance should be brought before the House by their Parliamentary representatives than that it should be left to seethe below the surface, or be brought to light through irregular channels.” It was early in the session of 1868 that Mr. Monk introduced his Revenue Officers’ Disabilities Removal Bill. Slowly and inch by inch it was carried through all its stages in the House of Commons, defeating the Tory Government of Mr. Disraeli, on the motion for going into committee on the bill, by a majority of thirty-two. This was certainly a triumph for the friends of Reform, considering that the Government had the support of the Leader of the Opposition in opposing the measure. Lord Abinger took charge of the bill in the House of Lords, when the Lord Chancellor, Lord Cairns, much to the astonishment of the peers themselves and many others in the Lower House, supported the measure most strongly. This was sufficient to ensure its success, and it speedily passed into law (31 & 32 Vict. c. 73).
During the subsequent Parliament, 1868-1874, Mr. Monk made several attempts to complete the measure of enfranchisement by enabling officers engaged in the collection and management of her Majesty’s revenues to take part unreservedly in the election of members to serve in Parliament. But he was invariably opposed most strenuously by the then Prime Minister, Mr. Gladstone, and it was not till another Parliament had been elected, in 1874, that he was enabled to accomplish that object by passing one other measure (37 & 38 Vict c. 22) through Parliament, with the concurrence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the new Government, Sir Stafford Northcote.
The services of Mr. Monk in getting passed the measure of 1868 were still appreciated by the newly-emancipated postal servants and others; and Mr. Frank Ives Scudamore, Assistant-Secretary to the Post-Office, on behalf of the Revenue Offices generally, presented him with an illuminated address, expressive of their gratitude to him for his skill and ability in carrying their “Bill of Rights” successfully through Parliament, “in despite of formidable opposition.”
If it was the higher grade of civil servants who for their own protection threw away their right to the franchise, it was the same class who recovered it, and who were instrumental in procuring it even for their humbler subordinates in the postal service and elsewhere.
During the progress of the agitation among nearly all Civil Service bodies to obtain the franchise, discontent was becoming all the more acute in the Post-Office. Doubtless the contemplation of practically the whole Civil Service engaged in furthering a united demand, in no small degree gave an impetus to the growing postal movement, and helped to develop the forces of discontent within.