THE COUNTRY’S VERDICT
1
How simple and decorous is a parliamentary election nowadays compared
with the tumultuous polling when voting was open, before the Ballot
Act of 1872! In remote times an election was decided by a show of
hands at a public meeting of the electors. The right of a candidate
to challenge the decision on a show of hands and demand a poll was
established in the reign of James I. However, it continued to be
the practice for the sheriff or returning officer on the day of
nomination still to ask for a show of hands on behalf of each of the
candidates, and to declare for the one in whose support the larger
number of hands had been uplifted. But as the majority of the crowd
were usually non-voters, the demand for a poll by the other candidate
followed as a matter of course. Formerly the election might last for
a month, and the voting stations might be kept open until late into
the night. Early in the nineteenth century a limit of fifteen days
was fixed for the polling. The Reform Act of 1832 further reduced the
period to two days, and provided also that the voting should take
place between the hours of nine and four o’clock, with the option of
opening an hour earlier on the second day, if the candidates agreed.
But on the polling days—whether forty, fifteen, or two—disorder and
violence were common throughout the country at the General Election.
Indeed, one of the first acts of a candidate was to have organized
a mob of bludgeon men to protect himself and his adherents during
the campaign, and also, of course, to intimidate the supporters of
his opponent. Between the rival mobs the constituency was kept in a
state of excitement and uproar during the polling. The most trying
part of the contest was the ordeal of the hustings. These were
temporary platforms erected in the square, at the market cross, or
in some other open place of the borough or chief county town, where
the candidates were proposed and seconded. The speeches were usually
little better than mere dumb show. Each of the rival politicians
made determined but usually vain efforts to convince the shrieking
mob, amid showers of stones, mud, rotten eggs and dead cats, of
the sublime virtue of his opinions, or of the utter depravity of
the views of his opponent. The sort of item that was common in a
candidate’s election bill before the Ballot Act was this: “To the
employment of 200 men to obtain a hearing, 460s.” These men believed
that the best way “to obtain a hearing” for their employer was to
prevent his rival being heard; and as the hired mob on the other
side was likewise animated by the same conviction, both candidates
were equally shouted down. There is, for instance, the evidence of
Bernal Osborne, a famous wit and Member of the House of Commons.
“The honourable gentleman talked about the voice of the electors,”
he said in a debate on old open-voting ways. “As if the individual
voice of an elector was ever heard at a nomination, and as if there
was not a general agreement to roar, to hiss, and become debased with
drink! The true-born Englishman is said to delight in that day. Now,
who are the true-born Englishmen?” he asked; and answered, “Why, the
representatives of muscular Christianity—prize-fighters and people of
that sort. I have spent as much money in retaining the services of
those gentlemen as anybody in this House. One of my most efficient
supporters in Nottingham was a man who was always clothed as a
clergyman of the Church of England, but who was really an ex-champion
of England, Bendigo by name.”
As an illustration of the treatment a candidate had to expect at the
hustings, and of the style of speaking which was thought appropriate
to the occasion, listen to Disraeli addressing the Buckinghamshire
electors at Aylesbury. Received with a cry of “You look rather
white,” he thus retorted: “I can tell you that it is at least not
the white feather I show. [Laughter and cheers, mixed with howling.]
If any member of the melodious company of owls [loud laughter]
wishes to address you after me, I hope that you will give him a
fair hearing. [Interruption.] I can tell the honourable gentleman
who makes this interruption that if it were possible for him to
express the slightest common sense in decent language, I should be
ready to hear him. In the meantime I must say, from the symptoms of
intelligence which he has presented to us to-day, I hope he is not
one whom I number amongst my supporters.” (Cheers and laughter.)
Disraeli, still directing his attention to his opponents, further
said: “Your most brilliant argument is a groan, and your happiest
repartee a hiss.” A voice then exclaimed: “Speak quick, speak quick!”
for he was a slow speaker, and he retorted: “It is very easy for you
to speak quick, when you only utter a stupid monosyllable; but when I
speak I must measure my words. [Loud cheers and laughter]. I have to
open your great thick head. [Laughter]. What I speak is to enlighten
you. If I bawl like you, you will leave this place as ignorant as you
entered it.” (Cheers and laughter.)
Another picture of a scene at the hustings which I call up from my
reading on the subject is of a painful kind. It was in the year 1865,
when there was a contest for Westminster, and from the hustings
erected in Covent Garden, at the base of St. Paul’s Church, John
Stuart Mill, the Radical candidate, addressed the crowd. In his
pamphlet, _Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform_, Mill bluntly said that
the working classes, though ashamed of lying, were yet generally
liars. This statement was printed on a placard by Mill’s opponent
and aroused against Mill the animosity of the working men of the
division. At one meeting he was asked whether he had really written
such a thing. He at once answered, “I did,” and scarcely were the
words out of his mouth when, as he states in his _Autobiography_,
vehement applause burst forth. The working men present were,
according to Mill, so used to equivocation and evasion, that this
direct avowal took their fancy, and instead of being affronted, they
concluded at once that Mill was a person whom they could trust. But
Mill does not mention the hostile reception he got when he appeared
on the hustings. Before the speaking commenced a member of the crowd
asked an enthusiastic supporter of Mill which of the gentlemen on
the hustings was the candidate. “There,” exclaimed the admirer, as
he pointed at the author of the treatise _On Liberty_, “there is the
great man.” “Then,” said the other, taking a dead cat from under
his coat and flinging it at Mill, “let him take that.” When Mill
afterwards spoke he was pelted by the porters of Covent Garden with
the garbage of the market.
The mob influence exercised at elections—often the determining
influence—might be intimidatory, but it was not always venal. These
unsavoury arguments, dead cats and rotten apples, were at times the
expression of sincere political convictions on the part of people
without votes. As it was only by the use of violence in some form
or another that non-voters could have weight in public affairs,
the Chartists were opposed to the introduction of secret voting so
long as the franchise was restricted to the comparatively few. They
admitted that the ballot would be an excellent thing if universal
suffrage were established under it. Until then they avowed their
determination to see to it that the unfranchised part of public
opinion should not be deprived of the chance of influencing the
electors, under a system of open voting, by the methods of blacking
eyes and smashing windows.
2
To convince Parliament of the beneficence of secret voting at
elections took forty years of unremitting advocacy, though meanwhile
the franchise had been enlarged. Grote, the historian of Greece, who
sat as a Radical for the City of London from 1832 to 1841, annually
moved a resolution in favour of the ballot. It was always rejected.
On the retirement of Grote into private life in 1841 Henry Berkeley
continued to move the motion every year, with the same want of
success until 1851, when, despite the opposition of the then Whig
Government, headed by Lord John Russell, he carried it by a majority
of thirty-seven. Nevertheless, twenty-one years were yet to elapse
before the ballot was finally established by Act of Parliament.
A Select Committee of the House of Commons, which sat in 1868 to
inquire into corrupt practices at elections, reported in favour
of the ballot as a measure likely to conduce to the tranquillity,
purity, and freedom of contests. The undue influence which was
exercised in various forms at open elections is strikingly set forth
in the evidence taken by that committee. Its most common shape was
the direct physical terrorism exercised by hired mobs. There was also
the more subtle intimidation of tenants by landlords, of workmen by
employers, of servants by masters, of tradesmen and shop-keepers
by customers, and, more reprehensible still, the undue spiritual
influence of ministers of religion, who, in the guidance of their
flocks as to the way they should vote, did not scruple to invoke the
terrors of the world to come.
The report of the Select Committee, which appeared in 1869,
greatly helped to turn public opinion in favour of the ballot. In
the following year W. E. Forster, a Member of the then Liberal
Government, with Gladstone as Prime Minister, introduced a Bill
abolishing nominations at the hustings and introducing vote by
ballot. It passed through the House of Commons, only to be rejected
by the House of Lords by 97 votes to 48, on the motion of the Earl
of Shaftesbury. The arguments against the measure had been set
forth long before by John Stuart Mill, one of the ablest and most
distinguished opponents of secret voting. As the franchise was a
public trust, confided to a limited number of the community, the
general public, for whose benefit it was exercised, were entitled
to see how it was used, openly and in the light of day. The ballot,
therefore, meant power without responsibility. It was also cowardly
and skulking. Under its shelter the elector was likely to fall
into the temptation of casting a mean and dishonest vote for his
own benefit as an individual, or for that of the class to which he
belonged. The Bill was reintroduced in the following session of 1872.
It passed again through the Commons, was sent up to the Lords, and,
despite the renewed opposition of Lord Shaftesbury, was carried to
the Statute Book. Since then the elector has been free to vote as he
pleased, according to the dictates of his conscience, his political
convictions, his foolish whims and his wayward fancies without
anyone knowing a bit about it. The Ballot Act was not, however, made
the permanent law of the land. In the House of Lords an amendment
limiting the operation of the Bill to eight years was accepted
by the Government. Therefore, from 1880 the Ballot Act had to be
renewed every year by being included in the Expiring Laws Continuance
Act—otherwise the measure would have had to be reintroduced and
carried through all its stages in both Houses—until 1918, when a
clause of the Representation of the People Act transformed it from an
annual into a permanent statute. Yet there is one election to which
the Ballot Act does not apply—an election for the representation of
a University. During the time allowed for the polling—about five
days—electors can vote either personally or by proxy papers, which,
having been signed before a justice of the peace, are sent by post
to the University, and in either case the votes are openly declared
before the presiding officer.
In the _Life of Grote_ there is recorded an interesting conversation
between him and his wife on the subject of secret voting after the
Ballot Act had been passed. “You will feel great satisfaction at
seeing your once favourite measure triumph over all obstacles,”
said Mrs. Grote to her husband one morning at breakfast. “Since the
wide expansion of the voting element, I confess that the value of
the ballot has sunk in my estimation,” the historian replied. “I
don’t, in fact, think the electors will be affected by it one way
or another, so far as Party interests are concerned.” “Still,” said
the wife, “you will at all events get at the genuine preference of
the constituency.” “No doubt,” said Grote; “but then, again, I have
come to perceive that the choice between one man and another among
the English people signifies less than I used formerly to think it
did. The English mind is much of one pattern, take whatsoever class
you will. The same favourite prejudices, amiable and otherwise;
the same antipathies, coupled with ill-regulated though benevolent
efforts to eradicate human evils, are wellnigh universal. A House
of Commons cannot afford to be above its own constituents in
intelligence, knowledge, or patriotism.” But this must be said—thanks
to the ballot, all parties are united in eliminating from the
stock of political arguments rotten eggs, stale fish, dead cats,
over-ripe fruit and decaying vegetables, and, in agreeing that in
electioneering it is better to count heads than to break them.
3
One of the most memorable of General Elections under the Ballot Act
surely was that held in December, 1918, following the passing of the
Representation of the People Act and the close of the World War,
when women voted for the first time. The scenes I saw in London on
the polling day, that historic Saturday, made a profound impression
on me. Women in thousands flocked to the booths as well as men.
Many wives and mothers of the working class brought their babies
in perambulators. What did they think of it all? They were not
subdued in demeanour and thoughtful, in keeping with the greatness
and gravity of the occasion. On the contrary, they were joking and
laughing, as if quite elated at the notion that they should be voting
for a Member of Parliament—and a Parliament in which, as it turned
out, a representative of their own sex was to sit for the first time
in the person of Lady Astor, of the Sutton Division of Plymouth.
Even so, was not this the last word in ordered and organized
democracy? Could there be, I asked myself, a more advanced and
striking manifestation of the free citizenship in the most
perfectly planned Republic? Then I wondered what the Barons of
Magna Charta—whose statues I have so often looked upon in the House
of Lords—would have thought of it, those feudal lords who, over
600 years before, extracted from an absolute King the first great
enunciation of constitutional liberty? Nay, why go back so far and
remotely? What would the working men who, as a protest against the
denial of electoral reform in July, 1866, tore down the railings of
Hyde Park, have thought of it? What they wanted was the extension of
the franchise to male householders. They could never have imagined
that their grand-daughters would have that which they themselves
did not then possess—the vote for a Parliament the least fettered in
the world by a written Constitution and the most omnipotent in the
exercise of its legislative powers.
4
The counting of the votes takes place on the night of the polling
day, or the next day as the returning officer may appoint. In county
constituencies, where the polling stations are many miles apart, it
is impossible to commence counting the votes until the next morning;
but in boroughs, where all the ballot boxes are delivered up to the
returning officer within a quarter, or at most half an hour, of the
close of the poll at 8 or 9 p.m., the counting is got through as a
rule by eleven o’clock. No person may be present at the counting of
the votes besides the returning officer and his counting clerks, the
candidates and their agents, except by the authority of the returning
officer, and everyone present is placed under an obligation to
maintain, and aid in maintaining, the secrecy of the voting.
The first thing that is done is to check the number of votes in each
ballot box with the return furnished by the presiding officer of
the number of ballot papers issued at the polling booth, in order
to see if they tally. All the ballot papers from all the boxes are
then mixed up together in one great heap, so as to make it impossible
to find out how the voting went in any particular polling district.
The ballot papers are next placed on the table faces upward, so that
the number printed in each case on the back—the only thing which
might give a clue to the identification of a voter—shall not be
seen. Any person who attempts to obtain the number of a voting paper
in violation of the secrecy of the ballot is liable to six months’
imprisonment. The ballot papers are then distributed among the large
staff of counting clerks seated at scattered tables in the room, and
the counting of the votes recorded for the several candidates begins.
There are two ways of counting in vogue. In one—the London way—the
clerks are divided into pairs. One clerk is provided with a sheet
of foolscap containing the names of the candidates with a number
of squares under each, and the other clerk goes through the ballot
papers calling out the name of the candidate opposite to which the
voter has placed his cross. If the vote is given for “Robinson,” a
stroke is inserted in one of the squares under Robinson’s name; if
it is given for “Smith,” a stroke is put in one of the squares under
the name of Smith. Provision is made on each sheet for 250 votes to
be thus counted, and when either of the candidates has received that
number the figures for each are put at the foot—“Robinson, 250,”
“Smith, 76”—and the sheet is passed on to the returning officer.
Under the other system of counting, each clerk places on the table in
front of him the ballot papers for each candidate in separate piles,
makes them up into packets of fifty, placing an elastic band round
each, and hands them over to the returning officer.
The work of the counting clerks is closely watched by an agent
representing each of the candidates. All votes about which there is
any doubt are referred to the returning officer. Any paper which has
on it any writing or mark by which the voter could be identified is
rejected. Some electors are so vehemently partisan that, not content
with making the simple “X,” they add personal remarks about the
candidates or comments on the political issues as the strong feelings
of the moment prompt them. I remember at one election where only
Liberal and Socialist candidates stood many angry Conservatives wrote
across their ballot papers such phrases as “Betwixt the devil and
the deep sea,” and “God help England!” Every voting paper so defaced
is cast aside. Any paper which contains votes for more candidates
than the elector is entitled to vote for is also void. There are
also voting papers about which hang the element of uncertainty. On
some the “X” is made on the candidate’s name; on others it commences
in one square and ends in another. Other electors, again, impishly
desirous no doubt of puzzling everybody concerned, make their “X”
meet exactly on the line which separates the names of the candidates.
Each paper thus irregularly marked is judged on its own merits, but
the guiding rule is that the vote is given to the candidate whose
name appears within that section of the voting paper where the lines
of the voter’s cross touch each other.
The candidates are also present in the room with some of their
leading and more intimate supporters, and often with their wives,
awaiting with such composure as they can command the result which
is to realize or disappoint their hopes and ambitions. Sometimes
the candidates never get into personal touch with one another until
they meet in the counting-room. And though Party feeling usually
runs high, those contests are not without their charming amenities.
It was on such an occasion that Thackeray was paid what he thought
was the greatest compliment of his life. He contested Oxford in the
Liberal interest in 1857, and, meeting his opponent, Edward Cardwell,
he remarked: “Well, I hope the best man will win.” “I hope not,”
replied the Tory candidate. Notwithstanding all the care of the
officials, aided by the vigilance of the candidates’ agents, mistakes
are occasionally made, and, what is more annoying and perplexing, are
not discovered until after the result of the count is supposed to
have been ascertained, though not officially declared in the room. A
bundle of counted ballot papers may fall unnoticed under the table,
or may be erroneously placed in the batch of the wrong candidate.
Surely no disappointment more bitter can befall a man than that of
the candidate who within five or ten minutes of his feeling certain
of being duly returned to Parliament finds there has been an error in
the counting, and that he has really been beaten after all.
The returning officer cannot vote at the election; but should there
be a tie between the candidates he may, if a registered elector,
give a casting vote. At a by-election for South Northumberland in
April, 1878, the candidates, Albert Grey (afterwards Earl Grey) and
Edward Ridley (subsequently a Judge of the High Court), polled the
same number of votes—2,912—a thing unprecedented in the case of a big
county constituency. The sheriff declined to give a casting vote as
returning officer, although himself an elector, preferring to make a
double return by declaring both candidates elected. A few days later
Mr. Grey and Mr. Ridley presented themselves at the Table of the
House of Commons, the oaths were administered to them, both signed
the roll, and both duly took their seats. They were not, however,
allowed to vote. In the scrutiny which followed it was found that
a few of the voting papers were spoiled, and Mr. Ridley, having a
majority of the correct votes, was awarded the seat.
So, too, in 1886, Mr. Addison, Q.C., was returned in the Conservative
interest for Ashton-under-Lyne by the casting vote of the returning
officer, who was also chief magistrate of the town. Mr. Addison sat
in the House of Commons for six years, according to the jocular
description of his opponents, as “the Hon. Member for the Mayor of
Ashton-under-Lyne.” In the event of a tie, the casting vote of the
returning officer is only operative if exercised on the declaration
of the poll. In October, 1892, at a by-election for the Cirencester
division of Gloucester, Colonel Chesters Master, the Conservative
candidate, was declared Member, having defeated Mr. Harry Lawson
(afterwards Lord Burnham), the Liberal candidate, by a majority of
three. A scrutiny of votes was demanded by Mr. Lawson, and this
showed that both candidates had polled the same number of votes. The
sheriff, having ceased to be returning officer on the declaration of
the poll, could not give a casting vote, and accordingly there had
to be a new election, when Mr. Lawson was elected by a majority of
upwards of 100.
Such awkward incidents, however, are very uncommon. The returning
officer, at the conclusion of the count, has usually no other duty
to discharge than publicly to declare the candidate to whom the
majority of votes was given duly elected to Parliament, and he sends
forthwith the return to the writ of election, bearing the name of the
successful candidate, to the Clerk of the Crown at Westminster. The
voting papers, the counterfoils, the marked copies of the register of
voters, and all other official documents relating to the election,
are also made up in a bag and sealed by the returning officer and
forwarded to the Crown Office. To give an idea of the enormous amount
of official papers used at a General Election, I have been told at
the Crown Office that they weigh from 22 to 25 tons. In case there
might be a demand for a scrutiny and recount of the voting papers in
any constituency, or a petition presented to declare the return null
and void under the Corrupt Practices Act, all these documents are
stored in the cellars of the Crown Office for a year and a day before
they are destroyed. The writs are kept by the Clerk of the Crown
until the Parliament is dissolved, when they are sent to the Public
Record Office, where they are preserved.
5
A candidate declared elected by the returning officer, but whose
return is questioned by petition, takes the oath and his seat in the
House of Commons and serves in the usual course until the report of
the two Judges who tried the petition is delivered to the Speaker
and is by him communicated to the House. Jesse Collings, in January,
1886, as Member for Ipswich, while a petition against his return was
pending, which resulted in his being unseated for reasons for which
he was personally blameless, moved and carried the small holdings
resolution, the famous “three acres and a cow,” which defeated Lord
Salisbury’s Government and brought back to power again the Liberals
under Gladstone. I remember a petition arising out of a contest at
Exeter in the General Election of 1910 which had a curious result.
The Liberal candidate was declared returned by a majority of four.
The Judges who tried the petition disallowed five votes for the
Liberal given by five men who were held to have been unlawfully
employed as bill distributors during the election, and accordingly
the seat was given to the Conservative candidate by a majority of
one. On the day the decision of the Judges was announced by the
Speaker I witnessed a very uncommon incident. This was the appearance
of the wigged and gowned Clerk of the Crown, bringing the return to
the writ for the Exeter election, and at the Table, in the presence
of the Speaker and the Commons, amending the return by substituting
“H. E. Duke” for “H. St. Maur” as the Member to serve for the
borough. Immediately afterwards Mr. Duke took his seat in the House.
6
It is a long and elaborate process, this obtaining of the Verdict
of the country; and rightly so, having regard to the momentousness
of the issues that may be at stake. The philosophy expressed at
a General Election may not always be thought very high or noble.
Often it has but root in an idea of material well-being—that men and
women who labour with their hands may enjoy a little more of the
pleasures of life before the time comes for them to lie down and die.
And that is a most excellent thing, and well worth striving for.
But it is quite possible to have inaugurated at a General Election
a mighty movement towards an entirely new conception or order of
life, like the foundation of Christianity, the Reformation, or the
French Revolution, and bring it about by the peaceful processes of
parliamentary evolution. To say the least, a Nation can unitedly
rise to a height of great glory by marching to the polling booths,
and, by its votes, securing the success of a high moral cause.
Anyway, nothing should be done to detract from the importance and
impressiveness of the General Election. The one substitute for the
ballot box that remains in this age is the match-box, not only as the
symbol but as the instrument of Revolution by fire and blood, with
the aid of a tin of petrol.