First published in 1941 by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd
This edition first published in 2019
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1941 G. D. H. Cole
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ISBN: 978-1-138-32435-0 (Set)
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ISBN: 978-1-138-33349-9 (Volume 7) (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-44593-4 (Volume 7) (ebk)
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G. D. H. Cole
BRITISH
WORKING CLASS
POLITICS
18321914
ROUTLEDGE & KEGAN PAUL LTD
BROADWAY HOUSE, 6874 CARTER LANE
LONDON, E.C.4
Five Reform ActsThe Growth of the ElectorateClass-Structure and Economic Development
I N the course of a century, between 1832 and 1928, five Reform Acts entirely transformed the basis of political representation in Great Britain. Up to 1832 the vote was, at any rate in the town constituencies, a privilege rather than a right. The urban franchise had no uniform basis: in a few towns the vote was widely distributed, to all householders paying scot and lotroughly the equivalent of local rateswhereas in the great majority of towns the number of voters was small. Often the right was confined to the members of the municipal corporationa body renewing itself by co-option, and excluding Dissenters. In many places there was a voting body of non-resident freemen, created by the corporation often for the purpose of ensuring a safe majority for candidates of the right colour. In not a few towns which returned members to Parliament, the town itself was a fiction, having fallen entirely into decay; so that the vote was attached to a few cottages, or even to a single cottage kept in existence solely for the purpose of maintaining the parliamentary privilege. Of this class were many of the rotten boroughs, completely owned by a single great landlord or by a boroughmonger who had bought up the place in order to be able to sell a seat in Parliament to the highest bidder. Readers of Thomas Love Peacocks novels will remember how, in Melincourt, he describes the borough of Onevote, situated close to the populous city of Novote, and how its solitary elector, Mr. Christopher Corporate, performed the ceremony of electing to the House of Commons two membersone of whom, in Peacocks story, was a tame orang-outang for whom his owner had also been at the expense of purchasing a baronetcy.
In the county divisions, the franchise was at any rate more uniform. But, being based exclusively on the ownership of landed property, it excluded the large and rapidly growing number of farmers who rented, instead of owning, the land which they tilled; and it also lent itself to abuse through the creation of fictitious ownerships for the purpose of conferring the vote. Big landowners, shortly before an election, would fictitiously convey small parcels of land to persons who could be relied on to vote as they were required; and in any case the large landowners exercised a very powerful influence over the smaller proprietors. Where opposition of any serious kind was offered to the large owners, it could come only from the lesser freeholders who had land enough to give them votes; and their views were commonly on most subjects fully as reactionary as those of the big proprietors. They had indeed a prejudice against high government expenditure and against the grant of pensions and sinecures at the taxpayers expense. But on other matters they had no programme; and when the County Reform movement led by Sir George Savile and Christopher Wyvill had been bought off by the Economical Reform Act of 1782, they gave little further trouble.
Thus, up to 1832 there was a highly exclusive franchise in the counties, and one yet more exclusive in the great majority of the boroughs which possessed parliamentary rights. Moreover, these boroughs did not include most of the new towns which had grown rapidly in population during the Industrial Revolution. Such towns as Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and Sheffield had no parliamentary representation at all.
It has been calculated that in 1831, on the eve of the first Reform Act, there were in England and Wales altogether about 435,000 voters, out of a population of nearly fourteen millions. Not quite one person out of every thirty had the right to vote. In 1832, after the Act, there were in England and Wales nearly 653,000 votersan increase of almost 50 per cent. Even so, not so much as one person out of every twenty possessed the franchise. But the redistribution of seats in 1832 was even more important than the increase in the number of voters. Great towns such as those mentioned above were now represented in Parliament, and there was a great sweeping away of rotten boroughs, including both those which had been in the pockets of single landowners or borough speculators and those in which the municipal corporation, with or without a body of appointed freemen, had monopolized the franchise. After 1832 most elections could have some real meaning, though the basis of representation remained very narrow, and the House of Commons was chosen, not by the people, but by the upper and middle classes alone.
By the year 1866 the number of electors in England and Wales had grown to more than a million, partly through the increase of population and partly through migration into the towns. There had been no further extension of the franchise, but in practice there had been a tendency towards widening it, owing to the growth in the relative numbers of the middle classes.
