[206:5] Of the borough electors in England and Wales 26.3 per cent belonged to the working classes; Com. Papers, 1866, LVII., 47, p. 5. In Scotland the proportion was 18.3 per cent. _Ibid._, 805, p. 12. [207:1] 30-31 Vic., c. 102. [207:2] One of the safeguards in the bill was the provision that householders must be separately rated for the relief of the poor, and must have paid their rates; and in order to insure personal payment by the householder, the Act forbade the common practice of rating the owner of dwellings in lieu of the occupier. But the practice saved the local authorities much trouble. It enabled them to receive the rates in a single payment from the owner of a number of houses, instead of collecting small sums from many tenants; and they were in the habit of allowing a commission or rebate to owners who paid in this way. The convenience of the old practice was so great that in 1869 it was again permitted; and the Act (32-33 Vic., c. 41) also provided that such a payment by the owner should be deemed a payment by the occupier for the purpose of the franchise, thus sweeping away the safeguard of personal payment of rates. The practice is called compounding for rates, and the tenant whose rates were paid by the landlord was the subject of fierce discussion under the name of "compound householder," although it was in fact the rate, and not the house or the holder thereof, that was compounded. [208:1] It will be observed that the £10 occupier differed from the householder in the fact that he might occupy any shop, warehouse, or other building, whereas the householder was qualified only by a dwelling-house. On the other hand, the premises occupied by a £10 occupier must be of the clear yearly value of £10, whereas the householder was qualified without regard to the value of the house. By the Act of 1867 the householder might occupy any part of a house used as a separate dwelling; while the £10 occupier must occupy a whole building. This difference was, however, done away with in 1878 by an act (41-42 Vic., c. 26, § 5), which provided that the occupation might be of any separate part of the building, if that part were of the yearly value of £10. [208:2] 31-32 Vic., cc. 48, 49. [208:3] They ran from a little less than one in twenty-one to a little more than one in twenty. _Cf._ Com. Papers, 1866, LVII., 215, 569. [208:4] _Ibid._, 643. The extension of the franchise in Ireland in 1850 nearly trebled the number of county voters there, in spite of the falling off in population. It may be observed that the growth in registered voters is not an exact measure of the increase in the number of persons qualified for the franchise, because with the organisation of the political parties there has been a greater and greater effort to make every man register who is entitled to do so. [208:5] Com. Papers, 1872, XLVII., 395.