I regret that I was not able to be present to hear the Minister's statement in moving the Second Reading of this Bill. I would like to refer to two statements that were made in this House quite recently. I feel it would be a pity to let them pass into oblivion without making a brief reference to them. In the official Report of the Seanad for the 4th-5th June, 1930, column 1398, I find that Senator Bagwell is reported to have said: " On the whole the higher the valuation the better the brains." What an ideal headline such a statement as that makes for the copy books for the children of the future. The Senator's statement, like the pilfering of Tut's tomb, takes us back to the mysteries of the past, revealing why it was and how it was that the Dublin Corporation, previous to the Reform Act of 1840, was called the "rotten Corporation." The statement, too, reveals how it was that none were elected to the Corporation except they were qualified as, and were grandiloquently known as, merchant princes.
But the Annals of Dublin burst the bubble of these princes. These are the moonlighters and the highwaymen—I say these things advisedly—these are the cut-throats and genteel scoundrels who posed as men of assumed respectability and as men of wealth and men of class distinction. The Annals of Dublin tell us that they posed as bigots both in religion and in politics, and the principal asset that they possessed was that they were Freemasons. The Annals of Dublin reveal that these sparking-plugs of infamy were able to cheat the citizens of their property. To bear out what I am stating, there can be seen any day in the Corporation leases the names of these princely robbers, of whose interest the Minister is now so careful, still adorning some of our streets—those people who deliberately robbed the citizens of their property, because they were on a moneyed register such as we are here to-day proposing. Anyone reading the statement of Senator Bagwell would come to the conclusion that he is a deeply read man. Anyone who did not know that there were some solemn and sensible people in this Seanad would come to the conclusion that we were all a lot of duds if we swallowed this piffle.
There was another statement made, and it is strange how some people squeal when the shoe pinches. Senator Sir John Keane said influences are at work to prevent us from acting in an independent manner. Really, I think that was a gross reflection on members of the Seanad. It took us back, perhaps, to the days when knights were bold, and the Senator, if he is an honourable man —I am sure he is, he is not here today—will explain what he means. It is statements like these general statements which were hurled time after time at the old Corporation, and if statements like these about the Seanad are not at once nipped in the bud I fear the Minister will be compelled to send Commissioners in here and then what will happen? Why, it is awful to contemplate. Our salaries stopped, our occupation, like Othello's, gone, and our holidays lengthened!
As to this commercial franchise, it had its being and has got its name from that abode of rest known as the Commercial Buildings, Dame Street, Dublin—a place which is availed of mostly by agents who have turned the City of Dublin into a dumping ground and a distributing centre for foreign goods. A little bird tells me that in this particular abode of rest certain company meetings were hatched and invested a great deal of their shareholders' money in gramophones.
I still hold that this commercial franchise is insidious and dangerous. It is, as I have said already, a direct invitation to the Communists to come on. It is the resurrecting of class distinction in its worst form, by money, because it increases the power or votes of the moneyed class. I found that stated in the Annals of Dublin in the year 1840. It is a very old saying that it is difficult for the leopard to change his spots. This franchise is giving six votes to the rich man and one vote to the poor man. The Minister has already lectured me on that statement, signifying more or less that I was in error. I may not have the choice language of the Minister, but I always call a spade a spade. This money register is an insult to the citizens of Dublin. The citizens of Dublin are considered capable as a whole of electing representatives to the Dáil to legislate for the State, but the Government, through the Minister for Local Government, consider that the citizens as a whole are not capable, of electing municipal representatives except they have a number of what I might call "pow-wows" with large banking accounts sandwiched in between them. It may be my ignorance of the Bill, but I have yet to learn what these choice specimens of humanity are to be called. Are they to be known as aldermen? Surely they could not be called councillors? That would be too mean. May I suggest to the Minister as a little amendment that it would be more correct if he called them bishops and supplied them with a special prie-dieu to prevent them from mixing with those elected by the common people. I go a little further and suggest to the Minister that he might have a phrenologist's chart hanging over each showing the complement of brains each possessed according to his valuation and then men of the type of Senator Bagwell would be in their glory.
The Minister in dealing with a few mild remarks I made before with reference to this franchise took me severely to task to the accompaniment of an amount of laughter from certain Senators, showing that it was their belief that democracy was on the run. They laughed at the statement made by the Minister on 28th May, 1930.
