behalf of parliamentary regeneration, and at a meeting under the auspices of this organization and presided over by Fox a program was drawn up calling for innovations no less sweeping than the establishment of manhood suffrage, the creation of equal electoral districts, the payment of members, the abolition of property qualifications for members, and adoption of the secret ballot. The revolution in France and the contest with Napoleon slowed up the reform movement, but after 1815 agitation was renewed. The economic and social ills of the nation in the decade following the restoration of peace were many, and the idea took wide hold that only through a reconstruction of Parliament could adequate measures of amelioration be secured. The Tory governments of the period were disposed to resist the popular demand, or, at the most, to concede changes that would not affect the aristocratic character of the parliamentary chambers. But the reformers refused to be diverted from their fundamental object, and in the end the forces of tradition and conservatism were obliged to give way.2

The first notable triumph was the Reform Act of 1832. The changes wrought by this memorable piece of legislation were two-fold, the first relating to the distribution of seats in Parliament, the second to the extension of the suffrage. The number of Scottish members was increased from 45 to 54; that of Irish, from 100 to 105; that of English and Welsh was reduced from 513 to 499. There was no general reapportionment of seats, no effort to bring the parliamentary constituencies into precise and uniform relation to the census returns. Yet the grossest inequalities were remedied. Fifty-six boroughs, of populations under 2000, were deprived of representation; 3 thirty-one, of populations between 2000 and 4000, were reduced from two members to one; and one was reduced from four members to two. The 143 seats thus made available were redistributed, and the aggregate number (658) continued as before. Twenty

It is interesting to observe that every one of these demands found a place half a century later among the "six points" of the Chartists. See p. 120. A bill embodying the proposed reforms was introduced by the Duke of Richmond in 1780, but met with small favor. A second society The Friends of the People - was formed in 1792 to promote the cause.

The reform movement up to 1832 is sketched in May and Holland, Constitutional History of England, I, 264-280. The best systematic account is G. S. Veitch, The Genesis of Parliamentary Reform (London, 1914). See also G. L. Dickinson, Development of Parliament during the Nineteenth Century (London, 1895), Chap. i; J. H. Rose, Rise and Growth of Democracy in Great Britain (London, 1897), Chap. i; C. B. R. Kent, The English Radicals (London, 1899), Chaps. i-ii; and W. P. Hall, British Radicalism, 1791-1797 (New York, 1912).

Of the fifty-six all save one had returned two members.

two large boroughs hitherto unrepresented were given two members each; twenty-one others were given one additional member each; and sixty-five seats were allotted to twenty-seven of the English counties, the remaining thirteen being given to Scotland and Ireland. The redistribution had the effect of increasing greatly the political power of the northern and northcentral portions of the country.

The alterations made in the suffrage were numerous and important. In the counties the forty-shilling freehold franchise was retained; but the voting privilege was extended to all leaseholders and copyholders of land renting for as much as £10 a year, and to tenants-at-will holding an estate worth £50 a year. In the boroughs the right to vote was conferred upon all " occupiers" of houses worth £10 a year. The total number of persons enfranchised was approximately 455,000. By basing the suffrage exclusively upon the ownership or occupancy of property of considerable value, the reform fell short of admitting to political power the great mass of factory employees and of agricultural laborers, and for this reason the bill was denounced by the more liberal elements. If, however, the privilege of voting had not been extended to the masses, it had been brought appreciably nearer them; and what was almost equally important it had been made substantially uniform, for the first time, throughout the realm.1

The Representation of the People Act of 1867. The act of 1832 contained none of the elements of finality. Its authors were, in general, content; but with the lapse of time it became manifest that the nation was not. Political power was still confined to the magnates of the kingdom, the townsfolk who were able to pay a £10 annual rental, and the well-to-do copyholders and leaseholders of rural districts. Whigs and Tories of influence alike insisted that farther change could not be contemplated, but the radicals and the laboring masses insisted no less resolutely that the reformation which had been begun should be carried to its logical conclusion. The demands chiefly emphasized were gathered up in the "six points" of the People's Charter, promulgated in definitive form May 8, 1838. The six points were: (1) universal suffrage for males over twenty-one years of age, (2) equal electoral districts, (3) secret ballot, (4) annual sessions of Parliament, (5) abolition of property qualifications for members of the House of Commons, and (6)

1 The more important parts of the text of the Reform Act of 1832 are printed in Robertson, Statutes, Cases, and Documents, 197-212.

payment of members. The barest enumeration of these demands is sufficient to reveal the political backwardness of the England of three quarters of a century ago. Not only was the suffrage still severely restricted and the basis of representation antiquated and unfair; voting was oral and public, and only men who were qualified by the possession of property were eligible for election.1

After a decade of spectacular propaganda Chartism collapsed, without having attained tangible results. None the less, the day was not long postponed when the forces of reform, sobered and led by practical statesmen, were able to realize one after another of their fundamental purposes. In 1858 the second Derby government agreed to the abolition of property qualifications for members, and after 1860 projects for franchise extension were considered with new seriousness. In 1867 a third Derby government, whose guiding spirit was Disraeli, carried a bill providing for a more comprehensive electoral reform than anybody except the ultra-radicals had expected, or perhaps desired. This Representation of the People Act modified, indeed, but slightly the distribution of parliamentary seats. The total number of seats remained unchanged, as did Ireland's quota of 105; Scotland's apportionment was increased from 54 to 60, while that of England and Wales was decreased from 499 to 493. Eleven boroughs lost the right of representation and thirty-five others were reduced from two members to one, the fifty-two seats thus vacated being utilized to enfranchise twelve new borough and three university constituencies and to increase the representation of a number of the more populous towns and counties.

The most important provisions of the Act were, however, those relating to the franchise. In England and Wales the county franchise was given to men whose freehold was of the value of forty shillings a year, to copyholders and leaseholders of the annual value of £5, and to householders whose rent amounted to not less than £12 a year. The twelve-pound occupation franchise was new, and the qualification for copyholders and leaseholders was reduced from £10 to £5; otherwise the county franchise was unchanged. The borough franchise was modified

1 Rose, Rise and Growth of Democracy, Chaps. vi-viii; Kent, The English Radicals, Chap. iii; R. G. Gammage, History of the Chartist Movement, 1837-1854 (Newcastle-on-Tyne, 1894); M. Hovell, The Chartist Movement (New York, 1918); F. F. Rosenblatt, The Chartist Movement in its Social and Economic Aspects (New York, 1916); H. U. Faulkner, Chartism and the Churches (New York, 1916); P. W. Slosson, The Decline of the Chartist Movement (New York, 1916).

profoundly. Heretofore persons were qualified to vote as householders only in the event that their house was worth as much as £10 a year. Now the right was conferred upon every man who occupied, as owner or as tenant, for twelve months, a dwelling-house, or any portion thereof utilized as a separate dwelling, without regard to its value. Another newly established franchise admitted to the voting privilege all lodgers occupying for as much as a year rooms of the clear value, unfurnished, of £10 a year. The effect of these provisions was to enfranchise the urban working population, even as the act of 1832 had enfranchised principally the urban middle class. As originally planned, Disraeli's measure would have enlarged the electorate by not more than 100,000; as amended and carried, it practically doubled the voting population, raising it from 1,370,793 immediately prior to 1867 to 2,526,423 in 1871.1 The act of 1832 enfranchised the middle classes; that of 1867 threw political power in no small degree into the hands of the masses. Only two large groups of people now remained outside the pale of political influence, i.e., the agricultural laborers and the miners.

The Representation of the People Act of 1884 and the Redistribution Act of 1885. That the qualifications for voting in one class of constituencies should be conspicuously more liberal than in another class was an anomaly, and in a period when anomalies were fast being eliminated from the English electoral system remedy could not be long delayed. On February 5, 1884, the second Gladstone ministry redeemed a campaign pledge by introducing a bill extending to the counties the same electoral regulations that had been established in 1867 in the towns. The measure passed the Commons, but was rejected by the Lords because it was not accompanied by a bill for the redistribution of seats. Agreement between the two houses averted a deadlock, and before the end of the year the Lords accepted the Government's bill, on the understanding that its enactment was to be followed immediately by the introduction of a redistribution measure.

The Representation of the People Act of 1884 is in form disjointed and difficult to understand, but its effect is easy to state. In the first place, it established a uniform household franchise

1 It is to be observed that these figures are for the United Kingdom as a whole, and therefore embrace the results not only of the act of 1867 applying to England and Wales, but of the two acts of 1868 introducing similar, although not identical, changes in Scotland and Ireland.

and a uniform lodger franchise in all counties and boroughs of the United Kingdom. The occupation of any land or tenement of a clear annual value of £10 was made a qualification in boroughs and counties alike; and persons occupying a house by virtue of office or employment were to be deemed "occupiers" for the purpose of the act. The measure doubled the county electorate, and increased the total electorate by some 2,000,000, or approximately forty per cent. Its most important effect was to enfranchise the workingman in the country, as the act of 1867 had enfranchised the workingman in the town.

In 1885, the two great parties coöperating, the Redistribution of Seats Act which had been promised was passed. For the first time in English history attempt was made to apportion representation in the House of Commons in something like strict accordance with population densities. The total number of members was increased from 6581 to 670, and of the number 103 were allotted to Ireland, 72 to Scotland, and 495 to England and Wales. The method by which former redistributions had been accomplished, i.e., transferring seats more or less arbitrarily from flagrantly over-represented boroughs to more populous boroughs and counties, was replaced by a plan based upon the principle of equal electoral constituencies, each returning one member. This principle was not carried out with mathematical exactness; indeed, considerable inequalities survived the rearrangement. But the situation was made vastly better than before.

In theory a constituency was made to comprise 50,000 people. Boroughs containing fewer than 15,000 inhabitants were disfranchised as boroughs, becoming for electoral purposes mere portions of the counties in which they were situated. Boroughs of between 15,000 and 50,000 inhabitants were allowed to retain, or if previously unrepresented were given, one member each. Those of between 50,000 and 165,000 were given two members, and those of more than 165,000 three, with one in addition for every additional 50,000 people. The same general principle was followed in the counties. Thus the city of Liverpool, which prior to 1885 sent three members to Parliament, fell into nine distinct constituencies, each returning one member, and the great northern county of Lancashire, which since 1867 had been divided into four portions each returning two members,

1 Strictly 652, since after 1867 four boroughs, returning six members, were disfranchised.