Mr. Anderson made his maiden speech in Parliament on the 3rd day of March, 1869. The occasion was the second reading of Mr. Fawcett's Election Expenses Bill, which proposed to throw the expenses of elections on the ratepayers. In the course of his address, which was listened to with the utmost attention, Mr. Anderson said—"To the great bulk of those whom he addressed, the payment of £200 or £300 was in all probability a matter of trifling importance; but undoubtedly the necessity for incurring even that expense had a great effect in limiting the field from which constituencies might choose their members; and if the House were anxious to avoid the charge of desiring to keep Parliamentary honours and political power in the possession of one class—namely, the class of very wealthy men—they must legislate in the direction proposed by the hon. member for Brighton (Mr. Fawcett). It should be remembered that in limiting the field from which constituencies might choose their members, the House thereby tended to limit its own intellectual power."
Again, in Committee of Supply on the army estimates, Mr. Anderson addressed the House on the 11th March, 1869; and on the 17th June, 1869, he electrified the "Colonels" of the House by declaring, while speaking of the great expense of the non-effective services and pensions, that "he thought the whole system of pay and pensions in the army was rotten and wrong.... Officers ought to provide for old age out of their incomes, and even if their pay were proportionately increased, the service would gain in efficiency if the change made it less aristocratic, by throwing it open to men without private fortunes, who must live on their pay." Mr. Anderson has persistently, both in season and out of season, kept "pegging away" at the bugbear of Army Reform, and on the 2d August, 1870, he attacked the abuse of sinecure Colonels, and abuses in the higher branches of the army; such as the Colonelcies held by the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Cambridge, the chief military secretary, and others. Mr. Cardwell, in his reply, alleged that these were honorary, but was afterwards obliged to admit that the Prince and the Duke were each paid for one colonelcy, the former £1350, and the latter £2200. He moved large reductions in the salaries of the commander-in-chief and the military secretary, in respect of their holding incomes from colonelcies, and repeated his motion in 1871. Although he was defeated in these motions, the result has been the restriction of the salary of the military secretary by £700 a year, and a prospective reduction of the commander-in-chief's by £450 at next vacancy. But it is hardly to be expected that these reductions will induce Mr. Anderson to desist from further attempts in the same direction. In 1871 he was selected to second Mr. Trevelyan's motion on army reform, and in speaking on that occasion he again attacked the sinecure colonelcies and other abuses in the administration of the army. He systematically opposes all increase of expenditure, particularly on the army, and in 1870, on the outbreak of the Franco-German war, when Government asked a vote of two millions for increased army expenditure, he was one of a minority of seven who opposed it. In the debate on the abolition of purchase, Mr. Anderson denounced the injustice of razing over regulation prices, and thus rewarding men for knowingly breaking the law. He pointed out that it would lead to officers getting not one, but two over regulation prices, and he afterwards supported Mr. Ryland's motion against that payment.
It is, however, to his Wages Arrestment Act and the Citation Amendment (Scotland) Act that Mr. Anderson stands indebted for his prestige and popularity as a legislator. The first of these is the bill which he introduced last session with the object of limiting the arrestment of wages. In Glasgow, and elsewhere throughout Scotland, the provisions of the measure were discussed with a good deal of personal feeling—one party arguing that the security afforded to shopkeepers by the power of arresting wages enabled them to give credit to working men when they could not otherwise venture to do so; while another class contended that extravagance and distress were the results of too easy access to credit. The general impression, however, appears to be that the bill will be productive of the most beneficial results both to the small shopkeepers and to their customers—the two classes most directly interested in its operation.
In reference to the Citation Amendment (Scotland) Act, which has put an end to keyhole citations in small debt cases throughout Scotland, we may remark that Mr. Anderson aimed, in introducing this measure, at the amelioration of the poorer classes, on whom the keyhole system pressed with undue severity. Previous to the passing of the new Act the officer appointed to serve a summons was permitted—if he did not find the defender at home, or could not obtain access to his house—to place the summons in the keyhole, after six knocks at the door, or to affix it to the gate; and whilst many accidents might readily occur to prevent its reaching the hands of the proper party, it was also not unfrequent for some one interested to take it away, and thus a decree in absence was too readily obtained.
In the Trades' Union and Criminal Amendment Bills he attempted several amendments on behalf of the working man, and was successful in some, particularly in excluding the jurisdiction of Justices of Peace from such cases in Scotland, which renders that Act less oppressive in Scotland than it is in England.
We may briefly indicate, in reference to the rest of Mr. Anderson's Parliamentary career, that he has voted in favour of Mr. Mundella's motion against the increase of the Army Estimates. He has supported the bill for the legalizing of marriage with a deceased wife's sister, and voted in favour of the Irish Church and Land Bills. On the 9th May, 1871, he voted in favour of Mr. Miall's proposed resolution for the disestablishment of the Church of England; while as cognate to this subject, we may add, that he has opposed Mr. M'Laren's Annuity Tax (Edinburgh) Bill, as well as the Church Rates (Scotland) Bill; though, in speaking to his constituents in 1871, he claimed to have been the means of bringing about the settlement of the Annuity Tax question.
During the last two sessions he has repeatedly called the attention of the Home Secretary to the prevalence and results of betting advertisements, and urged the need of further legislation. On mercantile subjects Mr. Anderson is considered somewhat of an authority, and in 1869, when the English Bankruptcy Bill came on, his knowledge of the Scotch system, which the English commercial members wished to adopt, was of some use, and enabled him to take a considerable share in the discussion of the clauses, and to carry a number of amendments, though failing in some important ones, he has taken an active part also in amending the Assurance Companies Bill, and in almost every discussion bearing upon the commercial relations of the country. Speaking against Mr. Delahunty's Money Law (Ireland) Bill in the session of 1869, he declared with reference to the proposed abolition of small notes in Ireland, that "if the House came to the conclusion that small notes ought to be abolished in Ireland, a proposal to abolish them also in Scotland would probably follow; and that it was only with the assistance of her small notes that Scotland had maintained her place in commerce and manufactures by the side of so enormously wealthy a country as England." It is worthy of note that Mr. Anderson is a convert to the abolition of the game laws, which until the session of 1870 he had wished to see only amended, not repealed. He is also in favour of the abolition of the laws of entail and hypothec. Mr. Anderson seems to have a thorough detestation of anything like jobbery. He has several times, by judicious questions in the House, succeeded in stopping a job—such, for instance, as the Colonel Shute scandal, and the proposed pension to the Military Secretary—and though he is a general supporter of Mr. Gladstone's Government he never hesitates either to vote or to speak against them when he thinks them wrong; and as no Government can see any merit in merely supporting them when they are right, he is naturally no great favourite in high quarters.
Mr. Anderson voted against any grant to Prince Arthur, and explained that he "thought it unfair that savings by the abolition of old offices on the civil list should go to the Crown, while the burden of establishing new princes was to be thrown on the people." He has also voted in a minority of four in favour of Sir Charles Dilke's motion for enquiring into the expenditure, under the various classes prescribed by the Civil List Act, declining to accept the general opinion that the vote was a Republican vote, merely because Sir C. Dilke moved it, and as a protest against the Government for refusing the information, and the Opposition Benches for endeavouring to howl down the motion.
Mr. Anderson's speeches are always short, unadorned, and practical. He has endeavoured, by moving a resolution, to reduce the inordinate length of the speeches in the House as the only way of saving time to get through the yearly increasing work of legislation, and he has proposed some other resolutions for facilitating the business of the House.