1818 May 20 + § 4

Parl Reform Bill

{Text}? Reasons Not

Election Offices

1

Why Keeper to appoint. Speaker to govern and remove.

☞ Note that the Postmaster General receives as well as transmitts Letters

Question – Why thus propose to establish a new National Election Office?

(a) There exists not at present attached to the House of Commons any such Office as the Election Office /any Office thus denominated /bearing that name//. The Office bearer by whom /under whose law[?]/ the Writs in which House of Commons Elections originate are issued out {and received back}, is styled Messenger of the Great Seal, and as such is appointed by the Lord Chancellor, on whom in quality of Keeper of that mysterious instrument depends on all occasions the use made of it What is evident is – that now that the meeting of the Parliament once at the least in every year is secured by established relations more surely operative /efficient/ than any laws can be, the House of Commons is the only proper site for an office with this duty belonging to it. In the days when that business was committed to the charge /lodged in the hands/ of the Keeper of the King’s Great Seal, what was practically /sufficiently/ certain /notable/ was that there would always be a Keeper of the Great Seal, what was never certain was – that there would be any other Parliament: so long as the King was not a spendthrift, he /but/ could prevail upon himself to content himself with his vast estate, consisting of /covering/ little less than the whole landed property of the kingdom, no: whenever he was a spendthrift, yes. But till the Revolution, except when he was a rapacious Miser, the King was /Monarch was almost/ always a spendthrift: and in this quality alone the continuance of Parliament has had its cause.