LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE DISFRANCHISEMENT OF THE SICK.
I To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR...1 SIE,—Your suggestion that a short Bill should at once be brought in to suspend for two years the disfranchisement of the elector who has received medical relief from the parish, proposes all that is wanted, and I trust that it may bear speedy fruit. The actual grievance is intolerable, both because it was unforeseen by the greater number of the new electors, who showed last autumn, by their enthusiasm, how greatly they looked forward to possessing the franchise, and because, now that they know the law, it is too late to recover the position they have unwittingly lost : and even those who have not yet happened to obtain the disqualifying medical relief, cannot, at a moment's notice, provide for the case of their wives and children, though their clubs may enable them to do so for themselves. With a year's grace there will be sufficient time for the organisation in every village of doctors' clubs, or the like provision for non-parochial relief—self-supporting, or aided by the wealthier class ; and this would put the country working-men on the same footing as they are on in the towns, where free hospitals and dispensaries relieve the corresponding classes from dependence on the parish. The casuist might draw some fine distinctions between the moral effects on the voter's independence of relief from the rates, and relief from the endowments or subscriptions of a hospital; and there is a difference of opinion among practical men as to the actual effects in either case. But anyhow, our working-men prize the franchise enough, and are averse enough to dependence on the rates, to be quite willing to do all that is needed in the matter, if only they have a reasonable time for getting free from a disability of which they had not been aware. The successive debates and votes in the House of Commons on Mr. Davey's clause showed how little the law had been known, even by Members of Parliament ; and that not even the Government had seen how important was its bearing upon the exercise of the franchise by the new voters at the coming election. The subject was not one generally understood, as it is getting to be more and more every day; and there is no reason why the Government and Parliament should not now admit the oversight, and set the mistake right. Indeed, there is the utmost reason for their doing so.
If this is no party question, and if as many Conservatives as Liberals will be disfranchised in the counties by having accepted uiedical relief, then all men who agree, whether with Lord Salisbury and Sir Stafford Northcote, or with Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Chamberlain, in approving the grant of the franchise, should join in facilitating its exercise by such a moderate compromise as you have suggested. But while there are, no doubt, many places where more Conservative than Liberal voters will be struck off the roll by the action of the law as it stands, there are other districts, such as the coal-fields of Somersetshire, with their large numbers of miners, including men who are earning hardly more wages than the farm-labourers in the same districts, where the householders are full of intelligent interest in politics, and eager to send Liberal representatives to Parliament. These men are everywhere learning that the vote is to be snatched from them in the first moment of the gift, perhaps because there has been an epidemic of scarlet-fever or measles among the children of their village. And their indignation and sense of injury are great; while the story told in the last Spectator —not by me, but by my son, the Liberal candidate for North Somerset—shows how the Tories see their gain, and even would rather not saveIhe rates than lose such an advantage. I am no Socialist; and with such weighty questions as Local Government and Local Taxation for cities and counties, and above all for Ireland ; Reform of the Land Laws ; and Housing the Poor, pressing for solution in the next Parliament, I could wish that the coming General Election should only interest itself in these and the like great issues, and that we mightlet the House of Lords alone, in the enjoyment of their own and their supporters' boast that it is they who have given the new electors their franchise. But if this disqualification is not removed before the present Parliament ends its work, we Liberals shall have no choice but to make it a cry to go to the country with. At every meeting of working-men we shall have to subordinate all other questions to this, and shall have to tell them again and again that the Tory lords and Tory squires are in a great conspiracy to deprive the working-men of the votes which they are hypocritically declaring that they are delighted to have given them by the Franchise Act. If we not only rouse again the temper of last autumn but infuse a spirit of Socialism in it, the fault will not lie at our door.—I am, Sir, &c.
Button Court, .Tune 1st. EDWARD STRACHEY.
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