In 1680, the
House of Commons of England resolved that accepting an
office of profit from
the Crown without the House's permission would cause
resignation from the House. However, that clause was not scheduled to come into effect until Anne's death, which would not occur until 1714. In the meantime,
Whigs desired to maintain a strong executive for the
Hanoverian monarchs who would succeed Anne, whereas
Tories wished to check the power of royal placemen. Tory desires to maintain the absolute ban on placemen in the House were narrowly defeated during the making of the
Regency Act 1705, while a Whig compromise to limit them to 40 was passed but modified in the
House of Lords. The Lords replaced the original list of offices that placemen could hold with a negative list of offices that would disqualify one from the Commons; while the Lords wished mainly to add certain prize offices to those already disqualified from the Commons, Tories in the Commons added several other offices, including all created after 25 October 1705. This process led to a "characteristically illogical English compromise" between those supporting the Crown's ability to dispense patronage and those wishing to bolster the Commons' ability to check the Crown: starting from the Regency Act and continuing with the
Succession to the Crown Act 1707, those holding certain offices of profit under the Crown, including ministries, were required to vacate their seats in the Commons, but could maintain their offices if they were re-elected. Commissions in the Army or Navy were expressly exempt from either total disqualification or the requirement for by-election. The requirement to stand in a by-election only applied when an elected legislator was first appointed to a
portfolio. Ministers already holding portfolios were not required to contest additional by-elections to remain ministers after being returned in a subsequent
general election where their party formed government. A minister typically sought re-election in the same constituency he had just vacated, but could contest another seat which was also vacant. It was not unusual for an MP representing a safe seat for the governing party to vacate his seat so that a minister might run in it. In the 18th century, it was rare for a new minister to be outright defeated in a by-election; between 1715 and 1754, only eight such occurrences happened between 393 by-elections, and only three defeats occurred from the 460 contests held between 1754 and 1790. The most common cause for a failure of re-election in this era was the ineligibility of the new minister to sit in the Commons, particularly by appointment to the Lords. Also more common than defeat was transferral to a new
constituency or retirement. This was largely due to a convention against contesting ministerial by-elections, with breaches being noted in the press. In addition, constituencies of under 500 voters, at the time around 60 per cent of all constituencies, saw roughly 80 per cent of ministerial by-elections. This was because MPs from larger constituencies tended to be
gentlemen shying away from government work, and because smaller constituencies were cheaper to manage a campaign. During the first half of the 19th century, regular by-elections were seen as local affairs whereas ministerial by-elections were seen as a test of the government's record. As the century progressed, however, this distinction was lost and all by-elections were seen as the concern of national party apparatuses. Most constituencies in this era returned two MPs; the fact that by-electionsincluding ministerial by-electionsentailed the election of only one candidate and thus did not allow for voters to cross parties as in a general election was such that they were often called "single elections", and this intensified the partisan implications of by-elections. Even without ministerial vacancies, by-elections were so common in this era that few years had fewer than 20 or 30, and several had as many as 65. Ministerial by-elections were, however, 28.3 per cent of all by-elections in the period between 1833 and 1867, and 20.8 per cent between 1868 and 1914, and were the most common cause of by-elections in the middle of the 19th century, slightly leading resignation and the deaths of incumbents. By the mid-19th century, the solidification of
responsible government made any fear of ministers being more loyal to the monarch than to Parliament purely academic. A large reason for the elections' persistence was that, in spite of claims by the opposition and
suffragettes that by-election losses reflected a failure of the government, many by-election defeats were quite narrow, and in any event a minister who lost a by-election usually won a second by-election in another constituency, as happened with
Winston Churchill, who lost
a by-election for
Manchester North West upon his 1908 appointment as the
President of the Board of Trade but soon won
another for
Dundee. Never concerned about his prospects of joining Parliament, after his loss Churchill boasted of having secured "eight or nine safe seats ... placed at my disposal." Occasionally, however, a newly appointed minister could fail to join Parliament and thus lose office altogether.
Charles Masterman was appointed the
chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in February 1914, but owing to the government's unpopularity lost
first a February by-election for his own seat of
Bethnal Green South West, then
a second by-election for
Ipswich in May; he was offered a third contest for
Swansea in February 1915 but instead resigned and ended his ministerial career. During the
First World War, temporary acts in 1915 and 1916 were passed to suspend the requirement for re-election, in order to allow the
War Cabinets of the
Asquith coalition ministry and the
Lloyd George ministry to be appointed quickly. Despite exuberance from the frontbench, Liberal and Irish Nationalist backbenchers, who felt betrayed by various actions of the ministry, attacked the acts' rationale and stated that the Commons was chronically underworked during the war. Opposition was sufficient to sink attempts for another moratorium in 1917, when Churchill had to run
a by-election on becoming the
minister of Munitions and successfully faced a challenger. Upon the return of peace, the Lloyd George ministry, which relied heavily on patronage, had its
house leader,
Bonar Law, table a bill that would become the Re-Election of Ministers Act 1919. Intending to abolish by-elections for seven ministers and allow up to three ministers without portfolio rather than one, the bill received no initial support outside of the government due to suspicion of Lloyd George. Since much of the opposition to the bill came from Conservatives, of whom Law was one, Law acquiesced and eventually formed a compromise with Liberals to abolish ministerial by-elections only in the first nine months after a general election. The Lloyd George ministry collapsed in October 1922, a process accelerated by the rise of the
Labour Party. In the ministry's final months,
a by-election for
Pontypridd in July had resulted in the loss of
Thomas Arthur Lewis to a Labourite, the last time in British history a ministerial candidate would lose a by-election. Subsequent governments did not last long enough for the nine-month period to expire until 1925. In that year, the
second Baldwin ministry fielded a candidate at
a by-election for
Bury St Edmunds in December and
again for
East Renfrewshire in January 1926, where
Alexander MacRobert prevailed by 900 votes to remain the
Solicitor General for Scotland. MacRobert had been criticised in that campaign for being too low-profile and relying on the government, and the Baldwin ministry was becoming fragile. A
private member's bill was introduced by the Conservative backbencher
Christopher Clayton shortly after the East Renfrewshire contest to abolish the ministerial by-elections altogether, which soon received the support of the government. Clayton asserted that the bill would simply continue the reforms of the 1919 act, while Baldwin reiterated previous arguments against such elections and noted that East Renfrewshire had gone through four elections in less than four years. Many MPs felt that not only was the remaining scope of ministerial by-elections small enough to not be worth retaining them, but also that enough by-elections occurred for other reasons to allow a gauge of public opinion on the government in between general elections. Although critics from Labour and the Liberals suggested that the bill be implemented at the next parliament rather than immediately, "by 1926 ... the fire had gone out of the debate" and the bill passed 143 votes to 74, being enacted as the Re-Election of Ministers Act (1919) Amendment Act 1926. Contrary to popular beliefs that Labour either advocated for or opposed the elections' abolition, Labour were constitutionally conservative in the 1920s and most Labour MPs abstained from voting on the 1926 bill; it was largely Conservatives who opposed the 1926 bill, 21 of them voting against it. Ministerial appointment had been the cause of 677 by-elections since the
Reform Act 1832 out of a total of 3,770 between 1832 and ; ministerial by-elections were the third-most common cause of by-elections, after the death of incumbents and resignation from the Commons.
The Times celebrated the abolition, declaring that "Queen Anne is Dead!" and asserting that ministerial by-elections were never an effective check on the executive even in the 18th century and had become even more antiquated with the shorter-lived parliaments provided by the
Parliament Act 1911. Further study confirmed that ministerial by-elections were largely fruitless at constraining the executive in the 18th century. ==Canada==