Payment of Members and of Election Expenses.

Why pay Members? Simply because there must be genuine workers inside Parliament to uphold the interests of the workers outside; and they cannot live on air whilst they are doing this. Working-class members cannot now afford to go into Parliament because their constituents cannot afford to keep them there, having barely enough to live on themselves. Even if members were paid so much per day, as they are in France, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Greece, Portugal, the United States, Canada, Newfoundland, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, New South Wales, New Zealand, &c., the expenses of standing for Parliament at present are enough by themselves to keep poor men (i.e., working men) from even thinking of it. A candidate has usually to guarantee the rent of an office, and the salaries of one or two clerks some years before the election, to work up the register and defend against the objections lodged in the interest of the other side. When the election comes off, he has to pay for the printing of his election address, its insertion in the newspapers, and its distribution at the houses of the voters. He has to pay for the halls in which he holds meetings, and for the printing and posting of bills to make these meetings known. He has to pay his share of the expenses of the Returning Officer, which may amount to several hundred pounds, and even then, he has to pay in addition the cost of notifying to each page 7 elector the places of polling. Few men will venture to face a parliamentary candidature, even when they can depend on a good deal of voluntary help, unless they can afford to spend a thousand pounds on it. If we had adult suffrage ten times over, working men could not get into Parliament if they still had to bear these monstrous expenses for doing the work of the public. Nothing but Parliaments of rich men can come out of such a system. At present there are five adult male wage-workers to every one gentleman in the country; but in Parliament the proportion is fifty-five gentlemen to one working-class representative—a pretty result of the Liberal and Tory Reform Bills which gave working men the vote without abolishing, as Radicals demanded, those pecuniary barriers to the House of Commons which have practically the effect of a heavy property qualification. That House is now full of men who live upon Rent and Interest. The less of the national produce goes in Wages, the more is left for Rent and Interest. That means that the House of Commons is full of men with a direct pecuniary interest in keeping wages as low and workmen as submissive as possible. In future, we must fill Parliament and the Local Governing Bodies with men who know what it is to work for wages; and they must have enough to live suitably upon whilst discharging their public duties. The registers should be made up at short intervals by public officers responsible under penalties for the omission of any duly qualified voter. All necessary expenses of election should be defrayed from public funds; and any attempt on the part of a candidate to supplement these by private expenditure should be deemed a corrupt practice. And in order that the paid members may be called to account for their work at short intervals, there must be no seven-year sinecures. No Payment of Members without Shorter Parliaments.