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Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume IX, Issue 83, 22 March 1919, Page 4

No doubt many people in New Zealand may have been puzzled as to the origin of the rule under which, in the Old Country, a Member of Parliament- accepting Ministerial office was bound to submit himself again for election to the House. The subject came into prominence at the times of the formation of the two successive. Coalition Ministries during May and June,

1915, and during December and January 1916-17, when emergency legislation was passed exemptmg their members from the operation of the rule. When Mr. Lloyd George reconstructed his Ministry after the general election held last December the question was again raised, w the Government intimated its intention to bring in a bill to make the exemption permanent. It was also proposed to make it retrospective, so as to cover the cases of four new appointments, viz. : Air. J. I. Mh pherson for Irelant., member for Ross and Cromarty), Sir L. Worthington Evans (Minister of Pensions, member for Colchester), Sir Robert G. Horne (Minister of Labour, member for Glasgow, Hillhead Division), and Sir Ernest M. Pollock (Solicitor-General, member for Warwick and Leamington). Although, so far as memory serves, •we have had no definite word by cable of the passing of the proposed bill, it may fairly be assumed that it has become law, for it was the announced intention of the Govern ment to bring it down at the first available opportunity and we hear nothing of a new election in any of the constituencies mentioned, although it is now over two months since the new Ministers took office.

Thus it would appear that a rule that has held for over two hundred years has been abrogated, it being one of the applications of a section of the famous statute of Anne passed in 1707 and generally known as the Succession to the Crown Act. The section in question read as follows: “If any member shall accept of any office of profit from the Crown during such time as he shall continue a member, his election shall be, and is hereby declared void, and a new writ shall issue fo» a new election, as if such person so accepting was naturally dead; provided, nevertheless, that such person shall be capable of being again elected.” Its purposes, so far as members of the Ministry were concerned, was to prevent the presence of "placemen,” a danger which existing franchise and electoral laws are deemed to quite sufficiently obviate. Many attempts have been made in the past to get rid of this embarrassing restriction, but until the outbreak of the war the House of Commons had invariably refused to part with what it regarded as a constitutional safeguard, to be used in case of need against the Ministry of the day. The arguments for and against repeal are well known in Great Britain. It was contended, on the one hand, that the Act, by forcing a by-election, might enable the electorate to give its verdict. which have otherwise been withheld, at critical times. It was argued, on the other hand, that in practice the choice of the Prime Minister of the day has been limited to members who held safe seats.