To the readers of the reports of parliamentary debates, in the newspapers, it may be useful to state, upon the authority of Mr. May, that “in the Commons no places are particularly allotted to members; but it is the custom for the front bench on the right hand of the (Speaker’s) chair to be appropriated for the members of the Administration, which is called the Treasury or Privy Councillors’ Bench. The front bench on the opposite side is usually reserved for the leading members of the Opposition who have served in high offices of State; but other members occasionally sit there, especially when they have any motion to offer to the House. And on the opening of a new Parliament, the members for the city of London claim the privilege of sitting on the Treasury or Privy Councillors’ Bench.”—May, on the Practice and Law of Parliament.
Sale of Seats in Parliament.
The smaller boroughs having been from the earliest period under the command of neighbouring peers and gentlemen, or sometimes of the Crown, were first observed to be attempted by rich capitalists in the general elections of 1747 and 1755: though the prevalence of bribery in a less degree is attested by the statute-book, and the journals of Parliament from the Revolution, it seemed not to have broken the flood-gates till the end of the reign of George II., or rather perhaps the first part of the next. The sale at least of seats in Parliament, like any other transferable property, is never mentioned in any book that the writer remembers to have seen of an earlier date than 1760. The country gentlemen had long endeavoured to protect their ascendancy by excluding the rest of the community from Parliament. This was the principle of the Bill, which, after being repeatedly attempted, passed into a law during the long administration of Anne, requiring every member of the Commons, except those for the Universities, to possess, as a qualification for his seat, a landed estate, above all incumbrance, of 300l. a-year. The law was, however, notoriously evaded; and was abolished in 1858, by the Act 21 Vict. cap. 26.
Placemen in Parliament.
In 1694 a bill passed both Houses “touching free and impartial proceedings in Parliament,” against the eligibility of Placemen. On its discussion Mr. Harley, afterwards Earl of Oxford, remarked, that “in the 1st of James I., the Chancellor, studious of the good of the kingdom, sent down to the House of Commons a list of the members in office, and they were turned out of the House, and new members chosen.” King William, however, refused his sanction to this Act. “A Dutchman (says Mr. Burgh) comes over to Britain on pretence of delivering us from slavery, and makes it one of his first works to plunge us into the very vice which has enslaved all the nations of the world that have ever lost their liberties. When the Parliament passed a bill for incapacitating certain persons who might be supposed obvious to Court influence, our glorious Deliverer refused the royal assent.”
New Peers.
Nothing is more plausible than to talk of strengthening an order by making it more popular in its constitution, &c.; but practically, we know that in early days in England nothing was so unpopular as a batch of bran-new potentates. The proofs are abundant. When James I. began scattering coronets (“crownets,” they called them in old times), a wag issued a pamphlet which professed to teach people “How to remember the names of the Nobility.”—Hannay.
The Russells.
Hereditary likeness is one of the commonest phenomena in the world, and is an index of the moral resemblance which makes character of a particular class run through a line, and thus, in free countries like ours, produces hereditary politics and affects the fortunes of the State, as was the case at Rome. “A Russell,” says Niebuhr, very justly, “could not be an absolutist; the thing would be monstrous.” This conviction is, no doubt, one excellent reason why Liberals glorify the race with such constancy.—Hannay. [Is not this the reason why Lord John Russell, when raised to the Peerage in 1861, preferred to the Earl of Ludlow the title of Earl Russell? He would not part with the glory.]