From this arises a constitutional anomaly which appears strange indeed. A pauper without a penny in the world, homeless and voteless, may be elected a Member of Parliament, while only a man of property and position, to the extent at least of being a householder or a lodger of six months’ standing, and a payer of poor rate, directly or indirectly, is qualified to vote for a Member of Parliament. Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, in a speech on the franchise laws which I heard him make in the House of Commons in 1895, gave a striking illustration of the absurdity to which the law in practice led. He said that his son, Austen Chamberlain, who gave him the pleasure of his society by residing with him, being neither a householder nor a lodger, was not entitled to the vote; and yet the law not only allowed his disfranchised son to sit in the House of Commons but to become a Member of the Government, he being at the time Civil Lord of the Admiralty. Mr. Austin Chamberlain was subsequently appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, the greatest and most responsible post in the Government next to that of the Prime Minister; and in the years he was the head of the Department controlling the raising and expenditure of the national taxation—being still unmarried and residing with his father—his name was not to be found on the burgess rolls of the Kingdom in respect of any rating qualification. I find that in the General Election of 1906 Mr. Austen Chamberlain voted in the City of London as a liveryman of the Cordwainers’ Company. 4