I rise to oppose this Bill and to ask the Seanad to reject it as an undemocratic and reactionary measure. The Bill really constitutes an impudent and indefensible invasion of the rights of the people to elect their legislators. There is no real justification for the measure. No demand for it has come from any responsible body of persons, or any responsible organisation, outside of interested aspirants to position and power, who dare not face the electors for whom they propose to legislate. The principal argument in support of this shameless abrogation of democratic principles is the fact that in the first and only election for the Seanad, held under most abnormal conditions, only 307,000 electors turned out to vote for the election of nineteen Senators. But even in that election of 1925, held under those abnormal conditions, it was necessary to have a quota of, approximately, 15,300 in order to become a Senator. Many Deputies have been elected with about a quarter of that number of votes. Everybody who is not too blind to see will remember the particular conditions surrounding the one and only election for the Seanad that has been held. In the first place, it was boycotted by one of the principal Parties in the country, which resulted in the abstention of a large number of electors, taking away from the election itself the interest that is created by keen contests and political opposition. The voting hours were only from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., just as if it were a general holiday, which it was not, resulting in thousands of electors of all classes who intended voting up to eight or nine o'clock being disappointed by the early closing of the polls, and also preventing people from voting before they went to business in the morning. The newspapers, some of which are now loudest in their condemnation of that election, were largely responsible for trying to kill interest in it by publishing nothing in connection with it except at the rate of one guinea an inch single column. Fancy applying conditions of that kind to a Dáil election and try to visualise the number of people who would come out to vote.
The wonder is that so many people took sufficient interest in the election under these circumstances. Because there was a small turn-out at one election is no reason for departing from the system of popular election. If for the London County Council only 38 per cent. of the electors voted, surely that is no reason why the London County Council, as a popular body, should be abolished, although it administers a revenue of £28,000,000 per annum, or considerably more than the total revenue of the Free State. The real complaint is not because of the number of people who voted, or who did not vote, but because certain people were defeated who it was thought would be elected. The Party ticket did not work to order in all cases. Even candidates who were carried in the arms of Ministers were not all elected. We have certain political pharisees who would have us believe that the Seanad electors have sacrificed moral claim to the suffrage, to the privilege of all free men, because in the nineteen electors that happened to be high up on the list, there were two representatives of a certain trade which I think is mentioned in Biblical history. With upturned eyes and in broken voices, more in sorrow than in anger, they point to this terribly profane act as the culminating deed of a degenerate and inebriate electorate. If they selected some of the manufacturers in that trade, that would have been a fine statesmanlike act, and we would have had no outcry. But the mere distributors are to be put outside the pale of the legislature. They are good enough, I presume, to subscribe to Party funds, and presumbably are good enough to stand as candidates for the Dáil. But in order to prevent the recurrence of such an outrage as having elected people of that trade to this august assembly we must disfranchise over a million Seanad electors.
Another argument is based on the question of expense. In creating an atmosphere some supporters of the Bill have been wildly inaccurate in their figures. We heard during the last couple of years statements in the Press and from platforms, to the effect that a Seanad election costs anything from £80,000 to £100,000 each time. In fact the impression was created in the minds of some badly informed people that it was an annual expenditure. The cost of the Seanad election in 1925 was only £44,000, and that is all that has been spent in regard to Seanad elections since the Constitution has come into operation. Economy could be effected in regard to elections by having them at rarer intervals, if that was the objection. But it is not the objection. On the same argument you could destroy all popular election to the Dáil, and to the various public authorities. Evidently in the minds of some modern statesmen and their instructors, the saving of a few thousand pounds per annum is of infinitely more importance than the exercise of these great principles for which there has been such huge expenditure of energy and suffering right down through the ages. If certain people who lost were elected the system would be extolled as a model of democratic wisdom. But if there were certain unsuitable people on the panel, who put them there? They were put there by the very people who are going to be, not only the nominators, but the electors of all Seanads for the future. The poor ignorant electors were condemned roundly for electing to this House people who were placed on the panel for them by members of the Dáil and Seanad.
It has been argued that popular elections would make the Seanad a replica of the Dáil. Necessarily it would not. The fact that there was a separate method of election, of nomination, the age of the electors, the age of the candidates, and the fact that a different constituency basis was adopted, would inevitably result in some material difference manifesting itself in the type of person elected as compared with the Dáil. But the new method will inevitably make this House a replica of the Dáil. The Dáil is going to predominate the elections. They will inevitably be on a purely Party basis, and they will be according to proportional representation, with the result that the people elected to this House on any one political ticket will inevitably be in direct proportion to the number that the Deputies that have elected them have secured in the other House. So that here we have one of the greatest arguments that was used against popular election—making the Second Chamber a replica of the popular Chamber.
But, when they wanted to select an electorate, they selected the most dependent electorate that the wit of man could conceive. Every Deputy will have in his own constituency aspirants to Seanad honours. Every man who has helped materially towards the election of a Deputy is going to advance claims that cannot be denied, unless the Deputy is going to take risks politically which human nature will not lightly or willingly take. How many T.D.s will have the moral daring to tell a local political bigwig that his political qualifications are not commensurate with his aspirations? These are the free and independent electors who are going to combine a moral courage, amounting to political suicide, with the matured wisdom of a Solomon in order that the Second Chamber may be the goal and the eventual reward of all the great and wise men of the nation. Then, too, the smallness of the electorate will render possible the most reprehensible practices and abuses. Instead of qualifying by the acquisition of useful knowledge or experience, or by a record of public service, candidates for the Seanad in future will have to qualify mainly as time-servers to half a dozen Deputies. Instead of going out on the hustings and manfully looking for thousands or tens of thousands of votes from the electors for whom they propose to legislate, the candidates will now have to cadge around the lobbies of Leinster House to get the votes of the half dozen people whose follies, or potential follies, and shortcomings it will be part of their duty to curb if they are elected. What a magnificent way of giving us an efficient, dignified and self-respecting Second Chamber!
There is a danger under the existing system. The smallness of the electorate and the dependence of the electors on the good will of the aspirants to seats in the Seanad—that useful public service will be construed as meaning the amount of contributions from individuals to Party funds or the help that they have rendered, or may be able to render, in getting Deputies elected to the other House. It seems to me that the future General Elections are going to bid fair to rival the experience we had in regard to the election of medical officers by the boards of guardians in the past. After a while we may have, in the interests of common decency, to get another Public Appointments Commission set up in order to see that corruption and malpractices are not resorted to. Without the semblance of a reasonable trial we are asked to turn our backs upon a method of election which was adopted by most countries that we are asked to look up to in most things. In the Commonwealth of Australia, the Seanad is elected by the same electorate as that which elects the popular House. In Belgium most of the Senators are elected upon the same electorate as that which elects the House of Representatives. In the United States of America, the Federal House there is elected by the same electorate as that which elects the members of Congress. In Czecho-Slovakia, the Second Chamber is composed of 150 members, elected by adult voters, 26 years of age and upwards. In Denmark, 59 of the Senators, out of a total of 78, are elected by the ordinary electors, who elect the members of the other Chamber, while the remaining 19 are elected by the outgoing members of the Second Chamber. In France, the Second Chamber is elected by an electoral college that is most elaborately constituted. Special elections take place all over France and its dependencies of delegates to the electoral college in connection with the election of the Seanad there. These are some countries in which there is popular election to the Second Chamber. Our system has been declared by many people to be the nearest approach they thought to the idea for forming a Second Chamber and, at the same time, adhering to the popular system.
The unwieldy nature of the constituency has been pleaded, but surely that is a detail. That could be remedied to a very great extent. It would be quite easy to divide the present constituency, which is the whole State, into three, four, or six constituencies, thereby making it quite easy for the people here to be able to understand, as well as they were able to understand at the last Seanad election, notwithstanding the circumstances of the time, the merits and demerits of the various candidates. I can quite easily understand the attitude of those supporting this Bill, who look upon democracy as a passing fad which can be honoured in theory and trampled upon in practice. I can understand the position of those who believe they are born legislators, whom a stupid electorate will not accept, and who are anxious to inflict themselves upon the people for the people's good. I can understand all that and more, but I certainly cannot understand the attitude of those ultra democrats who year in and year out bleat consistently and monotonously about the will of the people and of the right of the people to decide on every conceivable question, who talk of the people as the source of all power and so on ad infinitum, and who yet subscribe to a measure of this kind of naked and shameless reaction. The Fianna Fáil Party know that there is to be a Seanad. They know that it is to have very great and very wide powers, that it is to have the power of holding up a Bill for twenty months, and that it can thwart if it wishes and can hamper the actions of a patriotic and progressive Government. In spite of all that, they say that the people are not to have any views or any effective voice in the election of members of this House. For downright, brazen hypocrisy, the action of the Fianna Fáil Party in regard to the election of the Seanad is without parallel. There is no amount of explanation that will get them out of the position they have taken up in regard to this. I can quite understand, as I have said, the attitude of other people who really do not believe in democracy. They tolerate it, but they are not friendly to it, only because of expediency and not of principle, but when we come to people who pose as being the custodians of popular rights and of being heaven-sent exponents of democratic principles and policy, telling the people to whom they are always appealing, notwithstanding the fact that there is going to be a Second Chamber with great legislative and restrictive powers in existence, that they must not have any voice in the selection of that House, that they are too stupid and too incompetent to be able to select the people suitable for the carrying out of the work which a Second Chamber is supposed to discharge, it is really amazing.
I would ask the House to refuse to give a Second Reading to this Bill. If the members of this House wish to win the confidence of the country and the respect of the electorate, and thereby be empowered to do very much more good in the future than they could do otherwise, they will put the responsibility for departing from the democratic and the direct method of election upon the members of the other House. I do not know if there is sufficient conviction in the House to do that. If there is, then those who desire to maintain a Second Chamber which would be not only useful, but which would command the universal confidence of the people, should reject this Bill.
The method which is proposed will not give the most efficient kind of Seanad. We have evidence enough of that from the formation of the panel. It is not going to give independent or trustworthy men. It certainly is not going to give us the self-respecting men and women that we hope for. It is going to give us an anaemic contemptible assembly depending for its political existence upon the vagaries of a score of people in the other House. I can see nothing more humiliating than the spectacle of men messing about the corridors of Leinster House, buttonholing Deputies and Senators in order to get them to vote for them at a Seanad election. A candidate will be expected to do that, and having done it to take up a statesmanlike and independent attitude in regard to legislative measures passed by, among others, the people who sent him here. It is impossible. It is possible, I suppose, but it is unlikely, and not in accordance with the ordinary workings of human nature.
This Bill is evidence of the existence of that inordinate desire for the exercise of patronage which has brought so many corruptions and so much deficiency into the administration of this country. It is because of the desire to be able to exercise patronage, to be able to command support in the way of money from wealthy candidates and to be able to have hangers on around the other House, that this Bill is being brought in. It is mainly in that spirit that it has been conceived. It is not going to do any good to the country to pass it. It is not going to improve the efficiency or the usefulness of this House, and I hope the Seanad will refuse it a Second Reading.
