swing of the political pendulum will be longer than before. This change, made in 1867, although excellent in itself, has undoubtedly added a percentage to the duration of Parliaments beyond the original Septennial Act.

Frequent appeals to the people were almost unknown during the last century, and within the walls of the House of Commons itself political life seems at one time almost to have expired; during the twenty-one years that Walpole remained at the head of affairs, his administration is almost without a history, in the third year of his ministry there was but one division, and year after year there was no division at all.

The Tory Members were so few they hardly cared to attend. From the passing of the Septennial Act in 1716 until 1801-the first Parliament of Great Britain and Ireland under the Union--there were thirteen Parliaments; eight of which continued over six years, three over five and a half, one nearly five, whilst one lasted only three years and five months; the shortening of two of these Parliaments being occasioned by the death of two Sovereigns. Since the Union it has been generally the practice not to keep Parliament more than six years; indeed, in the ten Parliaments which sat from 1796, to the Reformed Parliament of 1833, there is but one instance of a Parliament going beyond six years, and that was the first of George the Fourth, which continued for six years, one month, and nine days; and only three went beyond five years: under three and a half years being the average

of the ten.

Since the first reformed Parliament of 1833, until the Parliament of 1868, the first which was elected under the Reform Act of 1867, there have been nine Parliaments, two of which continued for about six years; the one a month under, the other a month over six years; the rest varying from two to nearly five years: the average of the nine being three years and nine months. Since the Reform Act of 1867, we have had two Parliaments, Mr. Gladstone's of 1868, which lasted for five years and two months, and the present Parliament, which, having been elected in 1874, has already existed for five sessions, and may, as the law now stands, continue until February 1881.

During the last century, several attempts were made to obtain a return to triennial, or to the even more ancient system of annual Parliaments. The most important of these attempts was in 1734, when on the 13th of March, Mr. Bromley, the son of Queen Anne's Tory Secretary of State, moved the repeal of the Septennial Act. This motion led to a debate which was productive of at least two great Parliamentary speeches: the one by Wyndham the Tory chief, who supported the motion in a very remarkable speech which has been considered as one of the most powerful specimens of the

Parliamentary eloquence of that day; the other by Walpole, who, opposing the motion, insisted that there were still Jacobitism and disaffection in the nation, and that frequent elections would be dangerous to the liberty of the country.

Nevertheless, some Whigs, who had long scrupled about voting for the repeal of a Bill which they themselves had once thought necessary for the security of the Protestant succession, voted with the Tories, who in vain insisted that the Septennial Act was an encroachment on the rights of the people, for the motion was lost by a majority of 63, 247 voting against and 184 for it.

In 1745 the Tories brought forth a motion for annual Parliaments, in order, as they hoped, to shake the Hanoverian succession.

In 1792 the Whig leaders insisted that in order to prevent the practice of keeping one and the same Parliament on foot till the majority was corrupted by offices, gifts, and pensions, the ancient legal course of annually chosen Parliaments should immediately be restored.'

During the present century the question has not been prominent. There was a short debate in 1833, and again in 1834, when a motion for the Repeal of the Septennial Act came to a division, 185 voting for, and 235 against its repeal. Then there was an important debate in May, 1837, when 87 voted for the repeal of the Act, and 96 against. The narrow majority by which this motion was lost had, perhaps, the useful effect of causing attention for a time to be drawn to the question; and at the Edinburgh election in 1839 we find Mr. Macaulay speaking at some length upon the subject, and urging powerful reasons in favour of shortening Parliament to five years. He said:

The objections to long Parliaments are perfectly obvious. The truth is, that in very long Parliaments you have no representation at all. The mind of the people goes on changing, and the Parliament remaining unchanged ceases to reflect the opinion of the constituent bodies. In the old times before the Revolution, a Parliament might sit during the life of the monarch. The Parliament called by Charles the Second continued to sit long after two-thirds of those who had heartily welcomed him back from Holland as heartily wished him in Holland again. Since the Revolution we have not felt that evil to the same extent. But it must be admitted that the term of seven years is too long. Whatever may be the legal term, it ought to be for a year longer than that for which Parliament ought ordinarily to sit, for there must be a general election at the end of the legal term, let the state of the country be what it may: there may be riot, there may be revolution, there may be famine in the country; and yet, if the Minister wait to the end of the legal term, the writs must go out. A wise Minister will, therefore, always dissolve Parliament a year before the legal time, if the country be then in a quiet state. My own inclination would be to fix the legal term at five years, and thus to have a Parliament practically every four years.

For some time the subject of the duration of Parliament was virtually out of sight, but in 1843 Mr. Sharman Crawford raised

the question, and again in 1849 Mr. Tennyson D'Eyncourt reintroduced his bill for shortening the duration of Parliaments. This measure did not specify any particular period or term. On the 22nd of May of that year he obtained leave to introduce the bill, 46 voting in favour of it and 41 against. He does not appear to have proceeded with the measure, nor was anything heard of the question until incidentally, on Lord John Russell introducing his Reform Bill on the 9th of February, 1852, Mr. Bright drew attention to the silence of the noble lord about shortening the duration of Parliament. The noble lord had said nothing about the Septennial Act. Mr. Bright said he believed it would be better for members if they were more responsible to their constituents at the beginning of a Parliament. He found them suffering from an intense feeling of responsibility just before a dissolution. He should like that the feeling of responsibility should be spread over the whole period of Parliament. He believed that it would add very much to the conscientiousness with which members would perform their duty to that House. It would render it difficult for Government to call a party meeting in Downing Street to frighten them with a dissolution, a course pursued by Government from both sides greatly to the injury of the House.'

Again in 1858 there was a motion made upon the subject, but it led to no important discussion. It is not difficult, however, to see why this question has been less debated in modern times than some others connected with Parliamentary reform. Ever since the American war and the French Revolution until the Reform Act of 1867, the extension of the suffrage and the re-distribution of seats were too prominent to admit of or make the duration of Parliaments an important question. The American war opened the eyes of English statesmen to the necessity of Parliamentary reform, and Mr. Pitt in 1781-82 and 1785 propounded different plans, and nearer the end of the century the question received a fresh impetus by the French Revolution.

From that time till 1867 the questions of the qualification of voters and the adjustment of seats have been hotly discussed; and next to these the manner of voting, namely, whether it should be open or by ballot, was regarded as the most important.

In the face of such questions, in the face of securing a vote at all, in the face of the inequalities and corruptions which had so long. defaced our electoral system, it is clear that the question of shortening the Septennial period was of but secondary importance; but with these other questions settled, and by the light of new experience, especially the experience of sessions just closed, when it is admitted that the constitution was strained in a somewhat alarming manner, now is a most appropriate time for fairly and thoughtfully considering the question; for surely every thinking man will admit that he

ought to provide against evils which, though not really upon us, may fairly be apprehended.

Before the passing of the Reform Act of 1832 a general election was a very different affair to what it now is. The cost of elections under the Triennial Act was made a pretext for having fewer of them; but what was the result of extending the duration of Parliaments to seven years? This extension of the lease of power only made a seat in Parliament the more desirable, and intensified the bribery, corruption, and wild excess which had already been too marked a feature of all Parliamentary elections; and in support of this, I may quote some instances during the last half of the eighteenth century. At the general election of 1754 very gross bribery prevailed so much so that, out of forty-two elections, only one electoral contest took place. And in 1761, bribery was more lavish than ever, and the elections characterised by unusual excesses. In 1768 Earl Spencer spent 70,000l. to return his candidate for Northampton; and the Duke of Portland is said to have spent 40,000l. in contesting Westmoreland and Cumberland. In 1794, even before the election, Gatton already fetched 70,000l.; in 1830, Lord Monson is said to have given 180,000l. for this same borough of Gatton, which returned two members; and, in 1831, Lord John Russell declared that, within the memory of some men still living, an election in the city of York had been known to cost nearly 150,000l. From all this it is impossible for any one to assert that the Septennial Act in the least met the evils of great expenditure and corruption.

In truth, the people who had votes were only bought and sold for a longer period than before by the patrician families of England. Writing of England as recently even as in 1821, Sydney Smith said truly: The country belongs to the Dukes of Rutland and of Newcastle, and to Lord Londsdale and about twenty other holders of boroughs. They are our masters.' And about this time in Scotland. the state of affairs was just as unsatisfactory. Edinburgh and Glasgow had each a constituency of thirty-three persons, who were pretty much self-elected; and the whole constituency of Scotland was under 4,000 voters! The county of Argyle, with a population of 100,000 inhabitants, had but 115 electors. The potentates elected whoever they liked. Then in the county of Bute there were but 21 electors, only one of whom was resident. He took the chair at elections, and settled everything his own way. The Scotch magnates nominated nearly all the Scotch members, and sold themselves, with their protégés, to the Ministry of the day. In Ireland two-thirds of the hundred members were nominated by some sixty influential patrons!

With such a state of things how often Parliaments were elected was of no kind of importance to the people in general; nor, indeed, were the elections desirable in the interests of anybody, for during

a poll of fifteen days there was an entire suspension of business through the tumults and riots which prevailed.

These evils were greatly diminished by the Reform Act of 1832, limiting the duration of the poll, and have almost entirely disappeared by the operation of the Ballot Act of 1872, for elections are now conducted in the main in a most quiet and orderly manner, and are short and sharp, as in 1868 and 1874.

Before the Reform Act of 1832, great fortunes were spent in elections; such elections as that of Yorkshire in 1807, or that of Northumberland in 1827, are no longer heard of. Formerly in England, during a fifteen days' poll in a great town, money was flowing in all directions, streets running with beer.' Now, although no doubt the amount of money spent upon an election is often very large, and is a great evil, yet it is nothing in comparison with what it was before the Reform Act of 1832 and with the Ballot. I am of opinion that shortening the legal duration of Parliaments to five years instead of seven will rather tend to reduce the cost to members. No one will deny that a seat in Parliament is greatly coveted in this country, and that a seat in Parliament for one year is of less value than for three or five-that, in a word, the very fact of it being a seat for six or seven years makes it not only worth the while of rich men to spend a great deal of money to secure it, but the time itself being so long it is a question of now or never with many middle-aged men, who will spend any money to secure a seat. There would, in my opinion, be fewer contested elections to settle, and public affairs would be less obstructed by the anxiety of the members to secure their future seats. Short reckonings make long friends. No doubt the great cost of elections is an evil, but in the opinion of many the official expenses would be considerably reduced if they were borne by the electors instead of by the candidates. If borne by the electors, many persons would be interested in reducing expenses when possible, whereas at present no one is specially interested in the matter.

Before looking at the practical aspects of the question, it is worthy of notice that no other country in the world gives to its representatives so long a lease of power as we do in England. The longest period in any country with a constitution that I know of is five years, which is the duration of the Chamber of Deputies in France, of the Camera de' Deputati of Italy, and of the Cortes of Spain. Then Portugal, Belgium, Brazil, Greece, and the Netherlands have adopted four years; whilst Germany, Sweden, Denmark, and Switzerland have preferred three years. The United States, adhering from the first to the second article of their Constitutionviz. The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several States elect a fresh Congress every two years. Then, what is the position