HS Chapman and the secret ballot

Henry Samuel Chapman, 1867

Henry Chapman was born in England in 1803. As a young man he was sent by his employer to work in Canada.  Here he began to take an interest in politics. After the introduction of the Reform Bill in England in 1832 Chapman happened to be in Bath where he assisted with the election campaign of John Roebuck. Roebuck won the election. Aside from his other duties, Roebuck became the spokesperson for Canadian interests in Westminster. Chapman returned to Canada in 1833 where he set up a newspaper. The paper soon failed, but the liberal tone of the paper prompted the Assembly of Lower Canada to send him to London as a representative. Thus he joined forces with Roebuck a second time. Chapman became associated with philosophical radical causes. He wrote in favour of the establishment of South Australia. He attended a debate between Francis Place, Robert Owen and William Lovett at a meeting of the London Working Men’s Association at Lovett’s coffee shop. As a moral force Chartist, he wrote in favour of the Charter. He wrote for good government, reciting the Benthamite formula:

The object of Reform is to obtain good government, that which secures to the great body of the people the greatest aggregate of happiness … of the several instruments of government, by far the most important in its effects upon the happiness of the community is the body in which the power of making laws resides—in other words, the Parliament’. Parliament, however, was not representative of the people, and, like all parliaments, was concerned solely to promote the interests of the class by which it was chosen. Thus it followed, ‘that good government cannot be attained but by an extension of the suffrage to the great body of the people. [In Pamphlets for the People, no 22, published by John Roebuck]

Having studied to be a barrister, in 1843 Chapman migrated to New Zealand where he became a judge. His judicial duties were not onerous, and, as Neale puts it:

he spent his time as a Benthamite should. He established rules of procedure for the Wellington Court and, in co-operation with Chief Justice Martin, laid down a system of procedure for the Supreme Court of New Zealand, which became the forerunner of the existing Code of Civil Procedure.¹

In 1852 Chapman moved to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) where he became colonial secretary. However a dispute with the Governor over transportation – Chapman opposed it – meant he resigned his position. In 1854 Chapman published a 39 page pamphlet advocating responsible government for the Australian colonies (see useful references below).

Having lost his position as colonial secretary, Chapman moved to Melbourne, Victoria, in  1854 or 1855. In 1855 he defended one of participants in the Eureka stockade incident at Ballarat. But his greatest claim to fame is a piece of legislation he drafted for the colonial legislature.

Before continuing the reader is provided with a little warning note: the story of the ballot appears to be tinged with state parochial interests. Each state, Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia have their own versions. The most recent, the Tasmanian story by Newman, seems the most balanced. The Victorian version of the story is retailed by Scott and added to by Neale (refs below), and that is the one that follows next.

Radicals had been demanding the secret ballot for many years. The secret ballot was, for example, one of the six points of the Charter, written in 1838. In Victoria in 1856 the political tide had moved in such a way that legislation for the ballot was to be drafted, with every expectation that, if the legislation was sound, it would be passed in the legislature. There was only one problem. While many had argued for the secret ballot, no-one had ever got down to designing such a system – one that could cope with such contingencies as widespread illiteracy. It was expected by those who opposed the ballot that, in fact, the task would defeat the proponents of the system. Enter Chapman. With extensive legal experience, and a long association with radical politics, including the campaign for the secret ballot, he first designed a system and then reduced it to paper, drafting the first legislation in the world for the secret ballot. The system involved crossing out names one did not want to vote for, leaving the name of the candidate of choice, and putting the slip in a box. Sounds simple, but reading the various suggestions in Scott’s articles (see references below) it becomes apparent just how difficult it was to get over the problem of illiteracy while maintaining adequate secrecy, combined with a simplicity of system.

Now it is time to complicate matters…

As Scott and Neale have it the first time anyone had cast their mind to the functioning of a secret ballot was in January 1856. There was, in their version, no literature or record of debate or discussion about the matter prior to that. In broad detail the above story is correct. However it lacks acknowledgement of two developments. The first is that, according to Combe, a system for the implementation of the secret ballot was introduced into the South Australian Electoral Bill sometime during December 1855.  RD Hanson is given the credit for the clauses, and Kingston for putting forward notice, on the 7th of November 1855, that the secret ballot would be sought.

Combe is moved to observe that:

Although South Australia’s proposals for voting by ballot were initiated a month before Victoria’s scheme, the Victorian legislation became law on 19th March, 1856, a fortnight before assent was given to South Australia’s Electoral Bill. Subsequently the ballot was widely adopted for Parliamentary elections; the British and Canadian methods, inaugurated in 1872 and 1874 respectively, were essentially South Australian.

In Van Diemen’s Land however, clauses describing a system for secret ballot appeared in the Parliament Bill,  introduced into the Legislative Council on December 1, 1855.

Moreover, Newman suggests that ‘through his continued association with Tasmanian MLCs Chapman-like clauses appeared in Tasmania’s Electoral Bill.’  Thus both VDL and Victoria had a system where the desired candidate’s name on the paper was left untouched while the undesired candidates’ names were to be struck through with a line.  However in Victoria the registration number of the voter was to be placed on the back of the paper, while in South Australia and VDL this was not the case.

Obvious questions arise from these added facts. One of particular interest is who influenced whom in the development of the ideas? This, remarkably, appears to be, as yet, an untold historical story. The indications for a strong inter-colonial influence or discussion are strong. All states adopted a paper and box system, with variations. This was by no means inevitable as many other devices had been proposed such as using coloured balls. Moreover the three colonies commenced a serious attempt at the introduction of the secret ballot within a few days of each other in December 1855. And, as noted above, some specifics of the system were shared. Who actually won the race is of little moment, but where the ideas came from, what was the ‘zeitgeist’ in a distant pocket of the world that allowed three contiguous colonies to embark on the same project at a near identical moment, well ahead of the rest of the world, is of significant interest. What is notable is that the influence of Benthamism, through key figures such as Kingston and Chapman, is readily observable in at least Victoria and South Australia, and given Chapman’s association with VDL, perhaps in that colony too.

Anyhow, the table below showing relevant dates and other info, suggests that the implementation of the idea was so close, and the legislation similar enough, that some exchange of ideas between the colonies must have taken place at some point, most likely prior to December 1855.

 Useful references

Combe, Gordon, Responsible Government in South Australia, Adelaide : Government Printer, 1957

 R. S. Neale, ‘H. S. Chapman and the “Victorian” Ballot’, Historical Studies, Australia and New Zealand, vol 12, no 48, Apr 1967, pp 506-21;

Terry Newman, ‘Tasmania and the Secret Ballot’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, Vol 49, No 1, 2003, pp93-101

Scott, Ernest, The History of the Victorian Ballot, The Victorian Historical Magazine, Vol VIII, November, 1920, No. 1, p1-14

 Scott, Ernest, The History of the Victorian Ballot, The Victorian Historical Magazine, Vol VIII, May, 1921, No. 2, p49-62

 Chapman in the Australian Dictionary of Biography.

 Chapman in the Encyclopaedia of New Zealand

 Pamphlet by Chapman, Henry S. (Henry Samuel), 1803-1881. Parliamentary government; or responsible ministries for the Australian colonies/ by H. S. Chapman.  Hobart : Printed and published by Pratt and Son, 1854. Description: 39 p. (See a copy of the original pamphlet at the State Library of Victoria, and here is a link to their catalogue entry)

Table of events

Most of the information in the table comes from Newman, who also has a slightly less extensive table in his article. If you know of any dates and so forth to add, let me know. Reading Combe closely has given me a different date for the first introduction of the ballot clauses in South Australia from the date used by Newman. I can only imagine that all these things would be pretty easily verifiable.

The Vic system required the recording of the roll number on the back of the form so not as secret as those of SA and Tas.

According the Newman, while some of Chapman’s clauses appear in the Tas legislation, there are sufficient differences between the SA and Tas legislation to suggest they were developed independently of each other.

1. R. S. Neale, ‘H. S. Chapman and the “Victorian” Ballot’, Historical Studies, Australia and New Zealand, vol 12, no 48, Apr 1967, pp 506-21 [↩]