Payment of Members in England.

Te Aroha News, Volume XIV, Issue 2133, 21 July 1898, Page 2

Payment of Members in England.

Probably if a thousand well informed men were collected at random and asked if payment of members was the law in Great Britain one and all would answer by an emphatic negative. Yet they would be wrong. The curious part of it is that the very member who elicited the information, in answer to a by him, was unaware that such a law was in existence. The Hon HTV. Duncombe, member for the Egremont division, Cambridge, asked in the House of Commons why the law, as set forth in the act of the sixth ' year of Henry VIII, cap. 16, providing that members of parliament should not absent themselves from their duties without license from the Speaker, and the due entry of such license in the Clerk’s Record book, was not still observed. The Hon A. J. Balfour, in reply, pointed out that when that Act was passed there was a specific reason for the provision quoted. Membeis of Parliament then received a fixed payment for their services, and if they were absent for a single day they were fined by a proportionate deduction from their salaries. This law, Mr Balfour added, had never been repealed, but in the course of time the payment fell into disuetude, and for a very long time past no member had drawn any salary. ‘A member could not be fined by a deduction |fbm what he never received, so there was no reason for entering his absence in the Recerd book. So, assuming Mr Balfour to be correct, and he was no doubt advised in his answer by the Crown Law Officers, who would not make a mistake in such a matter, the law in England as regards, payment of members is practically the same as that in New Zealand. But in practice, while we know of no instance in which a New Zealand member has refused his salary, we have to dig into the musty records of the past to find a case where a member -in England claimed what the law entitled him to; -It is curious that during the agitation for jpayment of members in Great Britain, which has been carried on for many years, no one, apparently, discovered that what .they were agitating for was already the law of the land. It is even more curious that, as far as we can find, no reference Was made to the law of Henry VIII, in the delQtlgs on the question of payment of' members in the House of Commons in 1893 and 1895, when, resolution«fn favor of that course were adopted bn the motion of Nr William Allen.' We shall be curious to note whether some of the more impecunious members of the House will claim their salaries. We notice that some of the Radical advising them to do so.—H.B. Get d.