The Long Eighteenth Century

by Frank O'Gorman

  These hostile arguments should not be dismissed as groundless alarmism. They had formed the consistent basis for Tory hostility to reform over many decades, and represented a perfectly coherent and legitimate political position. Tories in 1831–2 were, of course, capable of exaggerated alarmism as when, for example, they denounced the bill as leading to the overthrow of hierarchy and the destruction of property; but many of their criticisms of Grey’s bill were less extreme. The problem with Tory attitudes was not the accuracy or inaccuracy of their doom-laden predictions but their inability to produce an alternative strategy to that of Lord Grey. Some kind of Reform bill was necessary. Peel hinted that a minor bill might have been acceptable to one that would address particular anomalies and not the extensive reform Grey was proposing. But he and Wellington had not been willing to countenance reform in 1830 and had refused to pass a reform measure in May 1832. In any case, a minor reform measure would not have been acceptable to public opinion in 1831–2.

  We must now briefly summarize the changes effected by the bill. First, as to the franchise, a standard householder franchise in the boroughs of England and Wales of £10 per annum replaced the varied traditional franchises. To lend continuity, however, existing voters were allowed to retain the franchise as long as they lived (the ‘ancient rights’ voters). Indeed, the act allowed the creation of new freemen in the old freeman boroughs, although it completely abolished the electoral rights of non-resident freemen In the English and Welsh counties the franchise went to adult males owning property worth at least 40s. per annum, or those with a copyhold worth at least £10 per annum and – the famous Chandos clause – those leasing or renting land worth £50 per annum. Second, as to the redistribution of seats, fifty-six English boroughs lost both their members, thirty lost one of their two seats, Weymouth and Melcombe Regis lost two of its four seats. No fewer than 144 seats were thus abolished, 22 per cent of the total. To replace them, twenty-two new double-member borough seats were created and nineteen single-seat boroughs. This total of sixty-three new borough seats was almost evenly matched by the creation of sixty-five new English and Welsh county seats. (The balance of new seats went to Scotland and Ireland.) Twenty-six counties were split into two divisions of two seats each, thus doubling their representation; Yorkshire obtained two new members; seven counties received a third MP. It is worth noting that the Reform Act of 1832 actually reduced the number of borough seats from 465 to 399 and increased the number of country seats from 188 to 253. Although it may be true that some of the new counties (South East Lancashire, for example) were really industrial seats, it is still the case that many newly enfranchised market towns looked to the countryside for their economic prosperity and social leadership. Third, as to the method of election, the 1832 Reform remedied some of the worst abuses. The polling period was restricted to two days (from two weeks) and by the provision of more polling places and polling booths. A register of electors was to be compiled in each constituency.

  English historians often ignore the fact that the Reform Act had the most dramatic consequences outside England. For example, at the general election of 1826, owing to the scarcity of election contests, only 500 out of more than 25,000 Welsh voters had been able to use their suffrages. Even worse, in the absence of a contest, not a single Welsh voter had voted in 1830.19 That simply could not happen after 1832 because of the increased number of electors and the increased unpredictability of their loyalties. In Scotland the position was the same. In 1826 not a single Scottish elector had voted; in 1830 only 239 had done so. In 1832 the Scottish electorate leapt up from 4,000 to 65,000 (from a population of 2.4 million), making many Scottish seats unpredictable and election contests thus much more likely. Indeed, the operation of the £10 franchise and the continued grouping of burghs resulted in average burgh electorates of around 1,300. These, including eight new burgh seats, would be difficult to control. On the other hand, the average Scottish county electorate, 1,100, was not large enough to prevent landed property from influencing the representation of the Scottish counties. The Irish electoral system had recently been reformed in 1800 and again in 1829, when the extensive franchise of 1800 had been modified by raising the county franchise. The 1832 legislation opened up the Irish electoral system, adding £10 leaseholders to the county franchise. Indeed, the new uniform borough franchise, the £10 householder, succeeded in unsettling the old proprietorial system in about half the boroughs. The act increased the number of Irish county voters from 26,000 to 61,000 and the number of borough voters, less spectacularly, from 23,000 to 29,000.20 There were, thus 90,000 Irish electors for a population of 7.8 million.

  The changes wrought by the Reform Act were of great significance. Before 1832 about 440,000 voters had the right to vote (although in practice the turnout was normally about 340,000). After the Reform Act the potential electorate of Britain was about 656,000, an increase of about 45 per cent. In England and Wales after 1832, indeed, something like 18.4 per cent of adult males could vote, (compared with 12.4 per cent before), far fewer in Scotland and Ireland.21 Although this is impressive, we ought to recognize that even before the Reform Act the size of the electorate was rapidly increasing. Since 1820, in fact, the county electorate had increased by 39 per cent, (from an estimated 191,600 to 266,232), and since 1818 the borough electorate by 37 per cent.22

  Every historian who has ever written about the consequences of the Reform Act of 1832 has drawn attention to powerful continuities in electoral and political history before and after 1832. After all, in many places the new electoral system was operated by the men who had operated the old one. Although the excitement generated by the political drama of 1831–2 and the widely shared sense of expectation led many contemporaries to expect a new political world, they were in many ways to be disappointed, once the dust had settled. In view of both the personalities and the motivations of the ministers, it would have been astonishing if change had been more pronounced than continuity. Because the ‘continuity’ interpretation is so well established, it is worth considering in some detail.

  First, and most important, the politics of influence was still of enormous importance in many of the counties and in the smaller and medium-sized boroughs. Family and proprietorial interests continued, many substantially unhindered, much to the disappointment of many reformers, and as a consequence electoral abuses continued. The Reform Act of 1832 made no effective attack upon electoral malpractice; in other words, the landed interest continued to reign supreme over the electoral, and thus the political, system. Lord Grey’s early decision not to propose a secret ballot was a sensible recognition that any attempt to subvert landed influence would have been futile. As has often been pointed out, the addition of sixty-five new county seats and the operation of the Chandos clause served, if anything, to strengthen it. There remained after 1832 no fewer than 73 borough seats with electorates of fewer than 500. Most of these were highly vulnerable to local landed influence. Some writers, notably D. C. Moore,23 have argued that the government tried to ring-fence landed influence, separating it from that of industry and commerce, by redrawing constituency boundaries. Of the boroughs that survived the 1832 Act, one-third had their boundaries changed, in many cases quite substantially. This may have been a subsidiary motive, but it does not seem to have influenced the major provisions of the act. It is also extremely doubtful that ministers had the time and leisure to calculate so clearly the consequences of their actions. Nevertheless, it was simply impossible, in most places, to separate rural from urban influences. Many 40s. freeholders lived in towns, and many boroughs were enlarged in 1832 by extending their boundaries into the rural hinterland. Nevertheless, the landed interest knew that it had done very well out of the act, assuming, further, that the Corn Laws had been given another lease of life. As Russell said in 1837, ‘we overdid it’.

  Second, many anomalies remained within the electoral system. The south was still over-represented, to the detriment of the industrial north and Midlands. The Reform Act had
not removed the very considerable disparities in the size of constituencies, which had been such a feature of the electoral system before 1832. When pressed to explain the inconsistencies effected by redistribution in 1831, Russell confessed ‘anomalies they found … and anomalies they intended to leave’. No fewer than 31 boroughs after 1832 had electorates of 300 or less. Many small towns were represented, while several large towns, including Croydon, Doncaster and Loughborough, were not. In some ways this should occasion no surprise. It can hardly be said too often that this was a propertied electorate. Population has to be taken into account but it was never regarded as the principal consideration in the electoral calculations made in 1831–2. Property, in its various forms as land, wealth, commerce and industry, was. Thus some small towns were given the representation in 1832 not because of their population but because, for example, Whitby was an important centre of the shipping industry and, in another example, because Frome was an important town in the West Country cloth trade. Furthermore, although the urban electorate was newly standardized with the enfranchisement of the £10 householder, there was still enormous variation in practice. Everything depended upon the level of rentals. Where house values were high, as in London and Bristol, many skilled workers would qualify. Where they were low, however, as in many industrial towns and in rural areas like Cornwall and Wales, relatively few householders achieved the £10 qualification. In Leeds only 5,000 out of a population of 125,000 did so, in Birmingham only 7,000 out of 144,000. Over the longer term, of course, inflation raised the number of voters but this was a gradual and extended process. On the other hand, in some constituencies, indeed, where the pre-1832 franchise had been unusually wide, the operation of the Reform Act actually reduced the size of the electorate. These included some towns where working-class voters were virtually eliminated either through the new franchise or through the dying out of the old ‘ancient rights’ voters – at Coventry, Preston, Westminster and, most of all, Lancaster, where the electorate steadily declined from 4,000 in 1832 to 1,000 by the 1860s.

  Third, there was no change in the type of person representing the new constituencies, no sudden appearance of middle-class radicals and Nonconformists, no sudden increase in the number of merchants and manufacturers. There was some talk of giving salaries to MPs but nothing came of it. They remained a wealthy and leisured group. As was revealed in the first general election on the new franchise in December 1832, men of the landed interest still made up between 70 and 80 per cent of the House of Commons. They also monopolized positions in the government. Of the 103 persons who served in the cabinet between 1830 and 1866 it has been calculated that only 14 represented new wealth. The number of middle-class MPs began slowly to increase in the 1840s but they did not constitute a majority until the end of the century. Until then, the middle classes were happy for members of the landed interest to represent them in Parliament.24

  Fourth, there was little change in the status of the act of voting. Voting was still viewed as the public action of voters, a privileged group with civic responsibilities, who were thus accountable to the rest of the inhabitants of the constituency. It was not a right to which everyone had access. The secret ballot would have introduced the concept of the act of voting as a private, individual action. To men like Lord Grey who rejected the secret ballots’ selfishness and secrecy would have devalued electoral politics. Without the secret ballot, money might change hands, and bribery and intimidation might prevail.

  Fifth, there was only a limited change in the structure of the electorate after 1832. Even on the new franchises, the electorate was still dominated by small men from the middling orders. Both before and after 1832 such men – artisans and retailers – constituted about 60 per cent of the electorate.25 The Reform Act did not usher in a middle-class electorate, it effected a change of balance within an existing middle-class electorate, increasing the number of retailers from one-fifth to one-quarter, and reducing the number of craftsmen from 40 per cent to 30 per cent. It was still an electorate of small men of property. What the Reform Act did ensure was that voters would reside in their constituency. One of its most underestimated features was its elimination of non-resident voters. These had formed a significant minority in the freeman boroughs. The Reform Act required householders to have resided at the address in which they lived for one year. The new electorate was therefore a resident, and thus a stable, electorate.

  Yet it is still too easy for historians, who have been privileged with the benefit of hindsight, to emphasize the elements of continuity after 1832. The supremacy of the landed interest, the operation of electoral influence and a vastly unequal distribution of property all survived 1832. Yet the struggle for the Reform Act had been a politicizing experience. The old days could never be recaptured, and even if continuity had been a deliberate policy in 1832 it was impossible to put the clock back. Contemporaries tended to be impressed with the elements of novelty, innovation and risk in the provisions of the Reform Act. These, especially to a remarkably conservative people, were formidable. Lord Grey may have not attempted to uproot existing institutions but the extent of the changes could not be gainsaid: one-quarter (144) of existing parliamentary seats eliminated; 128 new seats created; the franchise drastically changed, with many old franchises being completely eliminated; the size of the electorate increased by almost half, (potentially by much more); the method of taking the poll changed, especially in the counties; the electoral awakening of Scotland and Wales; the establishment of electoral registers. Nobody in 1831 would have expected changes on such a scale. Although the landed interest was still supreme in politics, the middling orders of the rising urban centres now assumed a much more prominent place in British politics than they had enjoyed before 1832. The reform door had been opened and, it would never again be in the power of the politicians to close it.

  The effects of the Reform Act on political parties were particularly far-reaching, more so at local than at national level. It is often claimed that with the formation of the great party clubs, the Carlton Club for the Tories in 1832 and the Reform Club for the Whigs in 1836 – significantly, in response to electoral reverses for each party in the preceding year – Britain entered a period of ‘Club government’. But it is not clear that these clubs were the first examples of formal central party organizations. London clubs like Brooks’s for the Whigs and White’s for the Tories, and in some ways the Pitt and Fox clubs, had performed similar functions many decades earlier. Such bodies had acted as wining and dining houses for the party elite, and as clearing houses for information and instruction. Election campaigns had been planned and executed in them and candidates matched with constituencies. The ‘Club government’ of the 1830s was built upon solid foundations of earlier practice and experience. The real impact of the Reform Act on political parties came with the registration clauses of the act. Parties now acquired permanent and continuous functions of the highest importance. Registration was not automatic and it was not straightforward. Electors needed the parties to assist with the complex processes that led to their enfranchisement. Here was vital work for parties to do, sponsoring and assisting voters to get onto the register and pleading disputed cases in the revising barrister’s court. Hence the registration clauses accelerated the formation of permanent local party associations and the appointment of permanent local agents in the place of the older, ad hoc party organizations which usually sprang into life only when an election was looming. These indispensable functions rooted local parties into the politics of their communities. The impetus to party formation, therefore, came less from high politicians at the centre than from the logic of the provisions of the Reform Act and from the enthusiasm of local party supporters in the constituencies. Furthermore, the financing of registration, the payment of agents and – still to a large extent – the selection of candidates remained in the hands of local enthusiasts.

  The provisions of the Reform Act, moreover, did much to party-politicize electoral politics. This was to some extent
the case because the Reform Act came in the middle of a series of remarkable political campaigns, for Catholic emancipation and for the abolition of slavery, which could not fail to have consequences for party politics. Furthermore, we should remember that the parties already had a considerable presence in almost all localities and in very many aspects of parliamentary electioneering. The detailed accounts of constituencies, contested elections, parliamentary campaigns and political propaganda simply could not have been written except in party terms. On top of all this, at the electoral level, the Reform Act seems to have been responsible not only for a substantial increase in the size of the electorate but also for a dramatic enhancement in the consistency with which voters voted for the same party from election to election. This had been a feature of the unreformed electoral system.26 After 1832, however, the overwhelming majority of voters were willing to give both their votes to candidates of the same party than they had been earlier. There is considerable disagreement among historians concerning the permanence of the electoral choices of the voters. How consistently did they vote for the same party at successive elections? According to recent studies, they did so with very great frequency, attaining levels of voting consistency of 80 per cent and more.27 What remains to be determined is why they did so: as a response to influence, as a product of social and peer pressure and, even, as a consequence of their employment. Since constituencies varied in their location, size and in their internal structures, it is almost inevitable that local factors would play a key role in determining a voter’s electoral choices. Thereafter the frequency of general elections immediately after 1832 might confirm earlier choices. Of course, the Reform Act created new voters and new constituencies, neither of which had earlier had an opportunity of declaring their party loyalties. In many of the new constituencies the balance of party advantage was not known, and could only be established by one or more elections. Consequently, the percentage of seats contested at general elections (no more than 30 per cent before 1832) increased sharply – at the general elections of 1832, 1835, 1837 and 1841 around two-thirds of seats were contested. By the 1850s, however, when the political complexion of many of the seats had become clearer, the rate sank back to below half.