The majority of the Committee on the Vacating of Seats
baying in effect reported that the succession to a peerage per se vacates a seat in the House of Commons, and the Selbome Committee having also reported that Lord Wolmer had succeeded to his father's Earldom, Mr. Anstruther, the Liberal Unionist Whip, on Tuesday moved for a new writ for a Member to serve in Parliament for West Edinburgh, "in the place of William Waldegrave Palmer, commonly called -Viscount Wolmer, now Earl of Selborne." This form, it is to be noticed, is a piece of arbitrary innovation, the regular resolution in such cases reciting that the Member had been called to the Upper House. No doubt the intro- duction of what is virtually a new form is not neces- sarily important, but it marks the fact that there is abaolutely no precedent for the course pursued by the House in treating a seat as vacant when the holder has neither been summoned to the Upper House nor accepted the Chiltern Hundreds. The decision of the House was of course based on the Report of the Committee on the Vacating of Seats ; but it is to be noticed that the Committee decided rather on what they deemed to be grounds of expediency and .on what they considered to be consonant with the spirit of the Constitution, than on the evidence. For declaring that mere succession without the issue of the writ vacates the seat here was a majority of four, Mr. Curzon, Sir Charles Dilke, and Mr. Swift MacNeil being the minority. When, however, it was moved to add words declaring that the decision was arrived at with a certain amount of doubt, the motion was only lost by two votes. The truth is, the matter is a very obscure one ; but on the whole the balance of law seems against the vacating of the seat till the writ is issued. The Commons, however, were determined to have a decision in the opposite direction, and the Committee reflected this general opinion. During the debate of Thursday a division was taken on the question of adjourning the discussion, but it was negatived by 234 votes (343 to 109). As far as Lord Selbome is concerned the subject is now closed, but the fact remains that the Commons have done something which they have previously always refused to do,—issued their writ before the Peer has actually received his writ of summons.
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