who at once the announcement that the government would "take into imdeclared in mediate consideration the state of the representation, with a favor of reform; new measure Lord Russell March 1, 1831; ministry defeated view to the correction of those defects which had been occasioned in it by the operation of time."1 To Lord John Russell, who was not in the cabinet, was assigned the honorable duty of drafting the new measure by reason of his mastery of drafted by the subject;2 and when he presented it to the house on March I, 1831, it was brought in without a division after a debate presented that lasted for seven nights. The first trial of strength came upon the second reading of the bill, which was carried by a majority of one only, in a house of six hundred and eight. Thus warned, the ministry, when defeated upon a resolution that the number of members returned for England should not be diminished, resolved not to proceed with the bill; and on April 22 parliament was prorogued "with a view to its immediate dissolution." 3 So triumphant were the reformers in the the nation appeal soon made to the nation, that the second reading of the second reform bill was agreed to on July 6, by a vote of 367 passed the to 231. Not, however, until September 21 did it finally pass September the house by a vote of 345 to 239.4 Then came the first 21; struggle in the upper house, where, on October 7, that body rejected by ventured to resist the national will by rejecting the bill on the lords; the second reading by a majority of 41.5 Undaunted by that and parliament dissolved; after an appeal to second reform bill commons third passed the commons March 23, 1832; rebuff, the ministry, sustained by a vote of confidence from the popular chamber, persisted in their purpose, and on December 18 the second reading of the third reform bill was carried reform bill in the house of commons by a majority of 162.6 Not, however, until March 23, 1832, did it finally pass that body; and on April 13 the second reading was agreed to in the upper house by the slender majority of nine.7 The supreme moment had now arrived; the lords, who did not dare in the face of the intense popular excitement then existing to reject the bill, resolved to emasculate and delay it by amendments. As a counterblast to that attempt, the people gathered in political attempt of the lords to bill aroused intense popular feeling; 1 Hans. Deb., 3d ser. vol. i. p. 606. 227. 8 Hans. Deb., 3d ser. vol. iii. p. 1810. 4 Ibid., vol. iv. p. 906; vol. vii. p. 464. 6 Ibid., vol. viii. p. 340. 7 Ibid., vol. xii. p. 454. violence, king peers; unions and excited meetings, resulting in personal insults to peers and other acts of mob violence, which brought the mob country to the very verge of civil war. As a constitutional method of coercion, the ministry proposed that the king should ministry resigned overcome the majority against the bill by the creation of new when the peers; and when he shrank from that radical proposal, they refused to resigned office. Not until the Tory opposition, under the lead create new of Wellington, had utterly failed to form a government did the king consent at last to make the necessary creations; and then, in order to render the performance of his promise to render unnecessary, he sent a circular letter to the opposition peers, creations appealing to them to declare "that in consequence of the unneces present state of affairs, they have come to the resolution of king appealed to dropping their further opposition to the reform bill, so that it the lords to may pass without delay, and as nearly as possible in its present bill; shape." Thus admonished, the lords resolved to accept the his suggesinevitable and to withdraw their opposition, and thus the bill accepted. finally passed by a vote of 106 to 22.2 1 such sary, the pass the tion seats from The primary object of the measure that thus became law Transfer of was to equalize the representation by the withdrawal of a rotten large number of seats from the rotten or nomination boroughs, boroughs to larger which were distributed among the greater districts that had districts; hitherto been either imperfectly represented or not represented at all. Thus were completely disfranchised fifty-six boroughs, including Old Sarum, Winchelsea, and Fowey, which had returned two members each, while thirty more, including Petersfield, Calne, and Rye, were reduced to one member only. The one hundred and forty-three seats thus obtained were redistributed as follows: twenty-two large towns, including and fortyManchester, Birmingham, and Leeds, were for the first time three seats permitted to return two members; twenty more, including tributed; 1 Roebuck's Hist. of the Whig Ministry, vol. ii. p. 334; Earl Grey's Corr., vol. ii. pp. 420, 444; May, Const. Hist., vol. i. pp. 144, 419-427. Sixteen peers were actually created to aid the measure, and it was understood that the king had consented to a further increase if necessary. 2 It received the royal assent, and became 2 & 3 Will. IV. c. 45. "In the house of lords the obstinate resistance of the majority, marshalled under the authority of the duke of Wellington, Lord John Russell, Essay on the a hundred thus redis county representation increased from to one hundred and fifty nine; county franchise ers and tenant occupiers; Chandos clause; Cheltenham, Salford, and Whitby, were for the first time permitted to return one member; while certain places in Wales, such as Tenby, Swansea, and Neath, were permitted to share in electing members with the shire towns. The increase in the county representation from ninety-four to one hundred and fifty-nine was readjusted by the division of twenty-five ninety-four great counties into two districts, to each of which was given two members; while seven other English counties obtained three members instead of two, and three Welsh counties two instead of one. Having thus rearranged the electoral areas, the act worked a greater revolution still in the qualification of extended to electors by extending the right of voting in counties, immeleasehold- morially possessed by freeholders alone, not only to leaseholders holding at a rent of £10, if the lease were for sixty, and at a rent of £50 if the lease were for twenty years, but also, by the clause termed the Chandos clause, to tenant occupiers holding at a rent of £50. And in order to prevent a multiplication of votes by the parcelling of estates, it was enacted that, if the freehold should be for life only, either the voter should be required to be in actual occupation, or the freehold itself should be required to be of the annual value of £10. In the boroughs, in order to extend the franchise to the whole of the municipal middle class, the right of voting was to all £ro given as a uniform rule to all occupiers of houses, shops, or buildings of any kind, of the annual value of £10. The receipt, however, of parochial relief constituted a disqualification of the borough electors. Electoral procedure was also greatly improved by the introduction from France of the system of registration of electors, which was made a condition precedent to the right of voting. Comprehensive registers of electors were finally established in every county and borough under the supervision and control of revising barristers, with the right of appeal to the higher courts of justice. It was further propolls to be vided that the polls, which under the old system could be kept open for an indefinite time, should be closed after two days, a limit finally reduced to one day only.1 borough franchise extended occupiers; introduc tion of registration; closed after two days. As the legislatures of Scotland and Ireland had long before 1 See the excellent summary contained in Lely and Foulkes' Parl. Elec. and Reg. Acts, pp. xvi-xviii. bills for Scotland land; members been incorporated with that. of England, and as their repre- Reform sentative systems were subject even in greater degree than bir the English to prevailing infirmities, it was absolutely neces- and Iresary that Earl Grey should extend his reform by two separate bills to those kingdoms. By the Act of Union (6 Anne, c. 7), the English house of commons, which then contained 513 members, was increased by the addition of 45 Scotch representatives; and by the Act of Union with Ireland (39 & 40 Geo. III. c. 67), the 100 new Irish members raised the total to 658. By the Scotch Reform Act of 1832, the 45 members eight new assigned to Scotland at the union were increased to 53,1 of given to whom 31 were allotted to the counties, and 23 to the cities the former; and boroughs. The main task, however, was to regulate the franchise which, in the Scotch boroughs, was vested in selfelected corporations, and in the counties, in the owners of feudal "superiorities," who were not necessarily either landowners or residents in their counties. In order to correct that Scotch franchise condition of things, the borough franchise was extended to all extended; £10 householders, while the county franchise was extended to all owners of "lands, houses, feu duties, or other heritable subjects" of the yearly value of £10, and to certain classes of leaseholders.2 Disfranchisement in Irish boroughs formed no part of the Irish Reform Act of 1832,8 for the reason that several rotten and nomination boroughs had been disfranchised at the time of the union. The new act, after adding five to five new the representation as fixed at that time, dealt only with the given to franchise which, in the boroughs, was taken away from the Ireland, corporations and vested in £10 householders, while great franchise extended; additions were made to the county constituencies by the inclusion of certain classes of leaseholders and of £10 copyholders. By extensions of the franchise it has been estimated that the total number of electors, reckoned at the passing of total numthe Reform Bill of 1832 at 400,000, was about doubled; and electors down to 1868, prior to the operation of the Reform Acts of about 1867-68, that total, for all the counties and boroughs of the United Kingdom, had not, according to the parliamentary 1 In 1867 seven members more were added for Scotland. No further changes were made until 1885. 22 & 3 Will. IV. c. 65. 8 2 & 3 Will. IV. c. 88. 4 See the estimate of Dr. Gneist, Hist. of the Eng. Constitution, p. 722. members and ber of doubled. All acts upon the subject for the next thirty-five years of minor im tary Regis of 1843; returns, grown beyond 1,370,793. To that extent, and only to that extent, did the reform measures of 1832 rescue the representation from an oligarchy of peers and landowners and vest it in the hands of the middle classes. The result thus attained by the old Whigs in their constitutional charter of 1832 was looked on for a long time as a finality. Despite several efforts made by Lord John Russell himself, and also by the earl of Derby, to further revise the portance; representative system, all such efforts failed to pass into law down to the time when the conservative ministry of the latter, mainly through the energy and tact of Mr. Disraeli, succeeded in passing the Representation of the People Act of 1867.2 During the intervening period of thirty-five years several acts were passed, however, developing and perfecting the original Parliamen- measure, which are worthy of special mention. By the Parliatration Act mentary Registration Act of 18433 the incomplete provisions of the act of 1832 upon that subject were perfected in many particulars, it being provided among other things that the register should be conclusive against the claim of any person acts for the to vote who was not registered. More important still were prevention of bribery; the acts passed for the prevention of bribery at elections, for which the Reform Act of 1832 had made no direct provision, and which continued to a disgraceful extent after its passage. The first effort to protect the new electorate against the tendency of the rich to traffic within its tempting ranks was embodied in Lord John Russell's Bribery Act of 1841; and when that proved insufficient, other acts of the same character were passed in 1842 and 1852,5 which were consolidated in the more comprehensive measure known as the Corrupt Practices Act of 1854, a temporary law continued from time to time, and so amended in 1858 as to render legal the payment of a voter's travelling expenses. The policy of excluding from the lower house all except the proprietors of land, adopted in Lord 1854; |