INSANE PEERS MAY VOTE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13307, 13 October 1906, Page 2 (Supplement)

INSANE PEERS MAY VOTE.

LUEICROUS POSITION IX THE HOUSE OF LORDS. A question* which has arisen out of the Town&bend case is whether imbecility is a bar to the issuing of a writ of summons to an imbecile peer of the realm to attend to the affairs, of the nation in the House of Lords. Mr. Swift MacNeill, who understands and remembers more of Parliamentary law than most people have ever known, points out in the Times that: — '"In the Bill introduced by the late Lord Salisbury .in 1888 , for exclusion from the House of Lords of members of that body on grounds* of moral obliquity amounting to criminality by ah Address to the Crown praying that the writ of summons to- the offending member might be withheld, and in the late Lord Carnarvon's equally abortive Discontinuance of. Writs Bill iii 1889, 110 provision was made for exclusion from, the House of Lords on the ground of mental imbecility." By the Vacating of Seats Act, 1886. a member of the House of Commons who becomes a lunatic after his election may be dejjlt with. Nothing, it is to be remarked, i.« said in reference to. those who were lunatics previous to their election. .The question of the moment, however, only applies to seats in the House of Lords, and has 110 reference whatever to the House of Commons, which " does not possess,'- as the late Lord Salisbury, as . Prime. Minister in June, 1888. said, "the power of expelling a member. - ' because members are summoned to that assembly by the prerogative of the- Crown." It is remarkable that, although under the Bankruptcy Acts, 1883, section 32, members of the House of Lords are declared to be incapable of sitting or voting in that assembly whilst bankrupt*, it appears that mental imbecility is no barrier to a peer to exercise his legislative functions. Lord Townshend, accordingly, who has . been declared incompetent to manage his own affairs, is, says Mr. MacNeill, in accordance with Parliamentary practice. regarded as competent to have a voice in Parliament in the management of the highest matter.'- affecting the nation. "So strange a ease," he adds, "and so strange a. position is not only ludicrous, but mischievous.'' ' ;. ; •