according to the rights which had last been determined by the house of commons. By which means the varying and anomalous usages of the different boroughs, and the contradictory decisions of committees, were sanctioned and confirmed."1 contracting Contradictory and capricious as such determinations were, of such their general tendency was to still further restrict the ancient decisions; franchise, and to vest it in a still more limited number of per tendency unjust distribution representation; sons. In some of the corporate towns the right to vote was vested exclusively in the governing body of the corporation, while in others, the inhabitants paying scot and lot, and freemen, or the freemen only, were permitted to vote. The short-sighted and selfish spirit which guided the crown of borough in multiplying borough members precluded the possibility of that high prerogative being used for correcting deficiencies existing from the beginning in the representative system, or for adjusting the disproportion that necessarily arose as time advanced out of the unequal distribution of wealth and population. In order to make the control of the crown and nobles more complete, the rule was to give the right of sending members to parliament to inconsiderable places, afterwards notorious as nomination boroughs, without any importance of their own, and dependent for patronage and protection upon the great manu- great adjacent landowners, while cities like Manchester, Leeds, facturing and Birmingham, that rose into importance with the growth overlooked of trade and manufactures, were left entirely outside of the representative system. Thus places like Old Sarum, not larger than an ordinary hamlet, unblushingly returned the nominees of their proprietors, while many of the growing commercial cities were obliged to submit to taxation without representaCromwell's tion. The bold and statesmanlike attempt made by Cromwell reform. in 16532 to remedy such conditions by disfranchising many centres and insig nificant hamlets favored; attempt at of the smaller boroughs, by increasing the number of the county members, and by enfranchising Manchester, Leeds, and Halifax, died with him, and thus the whole wretched scheme of inequality lingered on until it was finally corrected in the main by the Reform Bill of 1832. However great may have been the evils arising out of the 1 Merewether and Stephens' Hist. of Boroughs, Introd. 2 Act for the Settlement of the Gov ernment of the Commonwealth, De cember 16, 1653. ized system both to nomination patrons, failure to allot representatives to the counties, cities, and towns, An organaccording to their wealth and population, they shrink into in- of corrup significance when compared with the enormous abuses incident tion applied to an organized system of bribery and corruption, applied not electors and elected; only to those by whom the representatives were chosen in the local communities, but also to the representatives themselves after their arrival at Westminster. In dealing with the first branch of the subject some one has divided the constituencies into two classes: first, those who were sold by others; second, those who sold themselves. The first class embraced, of course, corruption the small nomination boroughs, in which certain lords and other in small wealthy patrons were able to dictate the choice of their nomi- boroughs belonging nees, over whose political conduct their control was unques- to wealthy tioned. In that way the peers not only had a voice in their own house, but they were represented by their nominees in the lower. At one time the duke of Norfolk was thus represented by eleven members; Lord Lonsdale by nine; Lord Darlington by seven;1 and in 1821 Sydney Smith 2 writes: "The county belongs to the duke of Rutland, Lord Lonsdale, the duke of Newcastle, and about twenty other holders of boroughs. They are our masters." The control of such pa- whose controns dates back to the fifteenth century, and in Elizabeth's back to the time the commons were warned lest "lords' letters shall from fifteenth henceforth bear all the sway." The right of the patron was regarded as regarded as a part of his estate, which he could dispose of as interest; he pleased, but he was supposed to sell the nomination, as a general rule, to one of his own political faith; if he sold to an opponent, a greater price had to be given as a compensation for the sacrifice. While the price of boroughs ranged prices at from £2500 to £5000, George Selwyn, the owner of the certain representation of Ludgershall, sold it for £9000. In the case were sold; of Westbury, the property of Lord Abingdon, the two seats valued at £10,000 were even put in the hands of trustees for the benefit of creditors. The one feature which is supposed patron to have somewhat redeemed this part of the system consists gave the of the fact that a generous patron, instead of selling the nomi- nomination nation, would sometimes give it to a worthy and rising man young man; 1 Oldfield's Rep. Hist., vol. vi. p. 286. 2 Mem., vol. ii. p. 215; May's Const. Hist., vol. i. pp. 333, 361. Romilly's Life, vol. ii. p. 202. 4 Letters of Lord Chesterfield to his 201. trol dates century; a property which boroughs were a generous sometimes to a rising relations stituents. who would not otherwise find a seat in the house.1 Such no personal nominees, whether through friendship or purchase, were not supposed to have any personal connection with their constituents; and we learn from the diary of Lord Palmerston that when he came into parliament from a borough belonging to Sir Leonard Holmes, "one condition required was, that I would never, even for the election, set foot in the place." 2 Methods of corpora selves : the case of Oxford; As illustrations of the methods of those constituencies or tions that corporations that enjoyed the privilege of selling themselves sold them- and of applying the proceeds to their own uses, reference may be made to the notorious case of the corporation of Oxford, which, availing itself of the general election of 1768, offered to return its members, upon condition that they would pay off its bonded debt of £5670. When the matter was brought before the house of commons by those to whom the offer had been made, the mayor and ten of the aldermen were committed to Newgate; but while they were there they actually sold the representation of the city to the duke of Marlborough and the earl of Abingdon; and in the hope of concealing the facts the clerk of the corporation carried off the books containing the evidence of the bargain. More shameless still, however, was the conduct of the notoriously corrupt borough of Suditself to the bury, which, without any attempt at disguise, shamelessly advertised itself for sale to the highest bidder. While the nomination boroughs of patrons and boroughs under control of close corporations could be thus disposed of, there were more populous places, such as the few great cities, the ports, and the thriving manufacturing towns, where the franchise was suffi ciently extended to insure a genuine expression of popular opinion, had the'voters been permitted to act without the pres corruption sure of corruption and undue influence. In order to secure the influence in representation of such places for the crown, the government populous candidates not only resorted to money bribes, but to the zealous support of the army of government officials employed in the collection of the customs and excise, who were appointed with Sudbury offered highest bidder; and undue places; 1 The younger Pitt was given a place in the house in 1781 by Sir James Lowther, who controlled the pocket borough of Appleby. 2 Bulwer's Life, vol. i. p. 23. pole's Mem., vol. iii. p. 153; May, Const. Hist., vol. i. pp. 338, 339, 344 346. 4 Walpole's Mem., vol. i. p. 42. Sudbury was ultimately disfranchised by 3 Parl. Hist., vol. xvi. p. 397; Wal- 7 & 8 Vict. c. 58. "2 of money "nabobs; a view to such work. If an opposition candidate by virtue of his personal popularity seemed likely to triumph despite such obstacles, the government was ready to destroy his hopes through a fraudulent return, or by keeping open the poll for forty days,1 during which time he was permitted to accept either defeat, or the financial ruin that such prolonged contests involved. The habit of corrupting electors by money bribes the giving which had become a recognized abuse in the reign of Charles bribes; II., and which the fresh importance given to the lower house by the Revolution had greatly advanced-was still farther stimulated by the advent of the "nabobs,' as those success- stimulated ful adventurers were called who returned from the East and by the West Indies, laden with spoils they were willing to divide with those who were ready to help them to places in parliament. Surrounded by such conditions, elections finally gave rise to a regular stock-jobbing traffic, in which "for many boroughs there stockjobbing was a fixed price." 3 Rather to prevent the intrusion of the traffic in nabobs into the political preserves of the great landed proprie- elections; tors than to suppress bribery, already recognized as an offence by the common law, was passed the act of 7 Will. III. c. 4. Not until 1729 was that act followed by the first statute 5 aimed statutes directly against bribery in parliamentary elections, which, after against an interval of eighty years, was reinforced by 49 Geo. III. c. bribery. 118. To cover cases not embraced in that act was enacted, in 1842, 5 & 6 Vict. c. ro2, s. 20; and, in 1852, the Corrupt Practices Act (17 & 18 Vict. c. 102), now in force. enacted of the repre county con The backbone of the representative system as thus organ- Backbone ized was the county constituencies, in which all forty-shillings sentative freeholders, including the country gentlemen and independent system, the yeomanry, were entitled to vote. Under so liberal a franchise stituencies; it was certainly to be expected that the independent class in whom it was vested would give forth a clear and bold expres 1 66 During this period, the public houses were thrown open; and drunkenness and disorder prevailed in the streets, and at the hustings."— May, Const. Hist., vol. i. p. 350. 2 For Lord Chatham's denunciation of them, see Parl. Hist., vol. xvi. p. 752. Davenant's Works, vol. iii. pp. 326, 328, "Essay on the Balance of Power." 4 Burrow, vol. iii. pp. 1235, 1388; Douglas, vol. iv. p. 294; Male's Election Law, pp. 339-345, cited by May, Const. Hist., vol. i. p. 334. Sir J. F. Stephen, however, rather discredits the assumption. Hist. of the Crim. Law, vol. iii. p. 252. 5 2 Geo. II. c. 24. Stephen, Hist. of the Crim. Law, vol. iii. pp. 253, 254. nobles and other great land owners over politics; enormous expendi tures to electoral sion of the popular will, unfettered by the ignoble influences that prevailed in the cities and towns. The difficulty, however, was that the county voters as a class were slaves of that control of social custom which recognized the nobles and other great landowners as local potentates, authorized by virtue of their status to direct the political affairs of their counties either in county person, or through dependents over whom they exercised a kind of feudal sway. The political control in many counties thus remained permanently in the hands of certain great families, whose battles for supremacy often rivaled in bitterness the feuds of the Montagues and Capulets, while the expenditures incident to electoral struggles often overtaxed even incident princely fortunes. In contesting Westmoreland and Cumbercontests; land with Sir James Lowther in 1768, the duke of Portland is said to have expended over £40,000, and in comparatively recent times an election for the county of York is known to have cost upwards of £150,000.2 When all of the influences, tending as well in the shires as in the towns to take away the franchise from the main body of freemen and to vest it in a comparatively few individuals, have been carefully estimated, it is certain that the actual number of persons who returned independ- the five hundred and fifty-eight members composing the house of commons after the union with Scotland was comparatively small. While such evidence as exists upon the subject is open to suspicion, we may accept as substantially correct the statement contained in the petition presented in 1793 by the Society of the Friends of the People, from which it appears that 1793 nomi- three hundred and fifty-seven members more than a majority actual number of ent voters compara tively small; a majority of the lower house in nated by 154 patrons; Dr. Oldfield's estimate made in 1816; of the house as then constituted — were returned to parliament by one hundred and fifty-four patrons, of whom forty were peers. Then in corroboration of that estimate we have, after the union with Ireland, the statistics contained in Dr. Oldfield's "Representative History" (1816), from which we learn that of the six hundred and fifty-eight members then composing the lower house, four hundred and eighty-seven were returned by nomination of the government, and two hundred and sixty-seven private patrons, of whom one hundred vi. 1 Oldfield's Representative Hist., vol. 2 Walpole's Mem., vol. iii. p. 197; 1831, in Hans. Deb., 3d ser. vol. ii. p. 1074; May, Const. Hist., vol. i. pp. 354, 355: Parl. Hist., vol. xxx. p. 787. |